
Class L. C p T" i 



Co' 

PRESENTED 



T. PEATHERSTONHAUGH 



. 



/60( 



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NATIONAL SERMONS. 



SERMONS, 



SPEECHES AND LETTERS 



SLAVERY AND ITS WAR: 



FROM THE 



PASSAGE OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL TO THE 
ELECTION OF PRESIDENT GRANT. 



BY 



GILBERT HAVEN. 




BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD. 

1869. 



I 



to^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

GILBERT HAVEN, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



?■ 



Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
No. 19 Spring Lane. 



Presswork by John Wilson and Son. 



TO 



Wxt ^tnxmft i%thm m& <Bprthvm 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST 
EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

The first organized body i?i America that accepted a?id proclaimed 

the duty of the immediate a?id unconditional abolitioii of 

slavery, after its announcement by William Lloyd 

Garrison; and that adhered faithfully to 

this cause, through evil report and 

good report, until God 

gave it the 

victory : 



Devoted to the consideration of this reform, in its past, -present, 

and future relations to the Church, the Nation, 

and Mankind, 

I0 dcrtrtallg Inscribe, 

In gratitude for their fatherly guidance, in memory of their fra- 
ter?zal cooperation, and in hope of the early obliteration of the 
unchristiatz prejzidice, grovjing out of the abolished iniquity, that 
still afflicts tke American people, and for whose extirpation this 
Conference has so long and so ardently labored and prayed. 



" Cfjese tfjtruja came to pass 
Jrom small fcegmnfnrjs facause ©oti is just/' 




INTRODUCTORY. 




HE New England ministry, like the Jewish, from 
its origin, has been faithful in setting forth the 
relations of the Gospel to the laws and customs 
of man. From the times of John Cotton until 
now, twice every year, and oftener if events demanded, 
have their words proclaimed the alarm or the exultation, 
as national sin or national virtue gave the occasion. 

So great was the clerical influence in these matters, that 
in the earliest days it was well nigh a clerical supremacy ; 
and the election sermon was not unfrequently a more im- 
portant document than the Governor's message. 

In the exercise of this prerogative occurred the natural 
division of the human mind on every topic submitted to 
its consideration, and radical and conservative were devel- 
oped, at the start, with a violence never surpassed in later 
controversies. The history of the Province of Massachu- 
setts Bay, even in the days of Governor Winthrop, dis- 
closes this furious pulpit war upon questions of civil and 

social import. 

(v) 



vi INTRODUCTORY. 

But witi this natural divergence, its main drift was ever 
toward political righteousness. It fostered the spirit of 
independence in the colonies, loog before the people gained 
strength to assert it. It was the supporter of Congress 
and the army through all that war, so long, so wasting, 
so often seemingly lost. 

Rev. Jonas Clark, of Lexington, was the chief cause 
why the untrained militia of that hamlet dared to confront 
the armed and disciplined troops of their own government. 
A sermon of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of the West Church, 
Boston, on the Higher Law, by the confession of John 
Adams, was the opening gun of the Revolution. President 
Langdon, of Harvard College, blessed, on that June night, 
the troops that marched from College Green to Bunker 
Hill. President Styles, of Yale, was a most ardent advo- 
cate of the national cause, as was his eminent successor, 
President Dwight, who had also served as a chaplain in 
the Revolutionary army. 

The later and greater struggle through which America 
has passed, was equally honored and upheld by the pulpit 
of New England. It found its earliest martyrs among this 
class. Torrey and Lovejoy, the first two witnesses who 
laid down their lives for the abolition of slaveiy, were New 
England ministers. Channing sprang to this conflict in the 
maturity of his powers and his fame. The Xew England 
Methodist clergy very early identified themselves with this 
cause. June 4, 1835, the New England Conference, sitting 
in Lynn, organized an anti-slavery society on the basis of 
the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery, and 
invited George Thompson to address them. He preached a 
very powerful sermon from Ezekiel xxviii. 14-16. '• Thou 



INTRODUCTORY. Vii 

art the anointed cherub that covereth ; and I have set thee 
so ; thou walkest upon the holy mountain of God ; thou 
hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of 
fire. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled 
the midst .of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned ; 
therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain 
of God : and I will destroy thee, covering" cherub, from 
the midst of the stones of fire." North Bennett Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, in Boston, was opened to him 
that year, on Fast Day, for a sermon, and received these 
words of commendation for their courage from the pen of 
Mr. Garrison : — 

In these days of slavish servility and malignant prejudices, we are 
presented, occasionally, with some beautiful specimens of Christian 
obedience and courage. One of these is seen in the opening of the 
North Bennett Street Methodist Meeting-House, in Boston, to the 
advocates for the honor of God, the salvation of our country, and the 
freedom of enslaved millions in our midst. 

He, however, declares that every other church was closed 
to him at that time, in this strong, possibly too strong, 
assertion : — 

As the pen of the historian, in after years, shall trace the rise, pro- 
gress, and glorious triumph of the abolition cause, he will delight to 
record, and posterity will delight to read, the fact that when all other 
pulpits were dumb, all other churches closed, on the subject of slavery, 
in Boston, the boasted " Cradle of Liberty," there was one pulpit 
that would speak out, one church that would throw open its doors in 
behalf of the down-trodden victims of American tyranny, and that was 
the pulpit and the church above alluded to. The primitive spirit of 
Methodism is beginning to revive, with all its holy zeal and courage, and 
it will not falter until the Methodist churches are purged from the pol- 
lution of slavery, and the last slave in the land stands forth a redeemed 
and regenerated being. 

When Mr. Thompson, persecuted for this righteousness' 
sake, was compelled to hide himself from his enemies, he 



Tiii • INTRODUCTORY. 

took shiter with Rev. S. W. Wilson, at Andover, a member 
of the same Conference, from whose house he went to the 
ship that bore him from the country. Rev. Orange Scott, 
also of this Conference, commenced writing against slavery 
in " Zion's Herald," in 1834, and during the same year sent 
"The Liberator' 7 free, for six months, to all the ministers 
of his Conference.* This faithful culture brought forth 
early fruit, and the very next year, when the society was 
formed, delegates were elected to the General Conference, 
who had the honor of initiating this conflict at Cincinnati, 
and of arousing a large church to the controversy, before 
their associates had widely extended their growing influ- 
ence. Two of the members from New Hampshire were 
censured for attending an anti-slavery prayer meeting, — a 
censure which remained a blot upon the church until 1868, 
when, on petition of members from Maryland, it was ex- 
punged, and the church relieved from the blame which she 
had for so many years fastened upon herself in their con- 
demnation. 

Equally zealous were other New England ministers : 
A. A. Phelps, Joshua Leavitt, Dr. Osgood of Springfield, 
James Porter, Dr. Ide of Medway, George Storrs, John 
Pierpont, Nathaniel Colver, Samuel J. May, J. D. Bridge, 
Daniel Wise, Phineas Crandall — everywhere began to spring 
up this good seed in this good soil. True, the churches and 
clergy were not all, or instantly converted, and many severe 
and just scourgings both received from those who devoted 
themselves exclusively to the great reform. Yet they made 

* For these facts we are indebted to Rev. R. W. Allen, of Newton, 
one of the original members of this New England Conference Anti- 
Slarcry Society. 



INTRODUCTORY. IX 

greater progress than was sometimes conceded, and before 
twenty years had elapsed, so universal had become their 
adhesion to this cause, that in the conflict over the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, more than three thousand min- 
isters of New England protested, "in the name of Almighty 
God, and in His presence," against that measure, and 
Charles Sumner, then fresh in the seat he has so long and so 
highly honored, gave them this just and noble tribute : — 

From the first settlement of these shores, from those early days of 
struggle and privation, through the trials of the Revolution, the clergy 
have been associated, not only with the piety and the learning, but with 
the liberties of the country. For a long time New England was governed 
by their prayers more than by any acts of the legislature: and, at a 
later day, their voices aided even the Declaration of Independence. 
The clergy of our time may speak, then, not only from their own virtues, 
but from the echoes which yet live in the pulpits of their fathers. 

For myself, I desire to thank them for their generous interposition. 
They have already done much good in moving the country. They will 
not be idle. In the days of the Revolution, John Adams, yearning for 
independence, said, "Let the pulpits thunder against oppression!" 
and the pulpits thundered. The time has come for them to thunder 
again. 

These discourses have, therefore, a natural origin. They 
are of the root of the fathers, alike of the oldest and the 
youngest of the churches of New England. They were 
delivered on the days appointed by the State or National gov- 
ernment, for the consideration of State and National duties, 
except in a very few instances, when the occurrence of re- 
markable events demanded the solemn consideration of the 
will of God in respect*to a sinning nation. They are upon 
nearly all the salient events in the controversy, from the hour 
when the nation, through her government, avowed herself 
the propagandist of slavery, to that when she declared that 
the last vestige of the iniquity should be swept from the land. 



X INTEODUCTOEY. 

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was the beginning 
of her active cooperation with slavery, after the revival of 
the refoi n, Before this, she had only sought to stay the 
progress of tha/ movement. In this act she cast herself 
earnestly into tL a support and extension of slavery. With 
rapid steps she plunged downward, till all the departments 
of State, executive, judicial, and legislative, were leagued 
together in its baleful service. She descended to the ut- 
most possible degree of degradation. Another step would 
have been annihilation, and even that, her executive and 
supreme judiciary essayed to take. Only the mighty up- 
rising of the people, under the inspiration of God, saved her 
from being blotted out from among the nations. From the 
hour of that return, her steps have been equally rapid in 
the right direction. Eighteen hundred and sixty beheld 
her President and Chief Justice prostrate at the feet of the 
power that had seized half the land, and proclaimed its 
independence of the United States. Eighteen hundred and 
sixty-eight saw that power destroyed, its foundation abol- 
ished, its rulers fugitives, its slaves rulers, and one, at the 
hour of her downfall, unknown of men, put by the popular 
voice at the head of the government, while all the world 
acknowledged him the first general of his age. Great and 
mighty are Thy works, Lord God Almighty ! 

These religious orations, as they should properly be called, 
cover this field of the long controversy. They rise and fall 
with the tide of national feeling, and thus the more faith- 
fully photograph their times. Being delivered at different 
places, and upon one general theme, they may contain some 
repetitions, though such passages have been omitted as far 
as possible consistent with the symmetry of the discourse. 



INTRODUCTORY. XI 

The range ( f topics is not confined to narrow, local, or mo- 
mentary limits, but embraces nearly every field into which 
the controversy legitimately entered. Objection may not 
be improperly offered, in this colder period of quiet and 
victory, to occasional expressions. But the rifle and the 
cannon grow hot in the battle, and the cool words of careful 
rhetoric are unsuited to the fearful crises when everlasting 
ruin or renown wait on the decree of the moment. If 
faithful to the hour of their utterance, they should still 
burn, like lava, long ejected from the blazing volcano. 

More than half the contents of the volume have been 
published in other forms, — in pamphlet and book, in the 
daily and weekly newspaper, in the monthly and quarterly. 
They are printed in the order of the national events. A 
few speeches and letters, that have a unity of substance 
with the discourses, are inserted in their appropriate place. 
The work thus presents what may be a novelty in printed, 
yet is far from being one in spoken literature, — a series of 
speeches that shows the sympathy and oneness of the pul- 
pit with the events, political and military, of the mightiest 
movements of God in this generation. 

But it would be unjust to the main purpose of this vol- 
ume to declare that it was chiefly ,a recollection. It looks 
before as well as after ; before more than after. Its object 
is not to gather up memorials of the past, but to enforce 
the duties of the future. History, that simply describes 
vanished events, is as purposeless and profitless as a moral- 
less tale. All history, like the Bible, should describe the 
past only to sanctify the present and perfect the future. 
This would fail of its object if it left the reader indifferent 



xii INTRODUCTORY. 

to the evil that still possesses too largely the American 
heart. Despite the mighty panorama of divine events that 
has passed before this people, their hearts are hardened 
toward those for whom God has wrought such great deliv- 
erance. We are still cursed with a curse, even this whole 
nation. Chattel slavery is dead. Political slavery is nearly 
at an end. Social slavery still prevails. Trade yet shuts 
its gates against the aspiring and competent youth of this 
complexion. Pulpits yet bar their doors to the accredited 
and popular ministers of Jesus Christ as their regular pas- 
tors. Society too generally abhors their companionship. 
Aversion thus defiles the whole national heart. 

The victims of our contempt feel the yoke of bondage 
with which we still burden their souls. The liberties they 
have won only make these chains the more galling. Not 
until every such fetter is broken will God's controversy 
with America come to an end. To their removal these 
pages are consecrated. The past is past ; the future beck- 
ons us. The words that urged to duties done, call to the 
discharge of duties that must be done. May this crown be 
won and worn by the American people. They only need 
to conquer this prejudice, to become the model and the 
inspiration of all the nations of the earth. May Church, 
State, and Society, in all their life, speedily reveal the per- 
fect cleansing of the American heart from the unbrotherly 
distinction of man from man. May the Father and Brother 
of all men, who has created them in His image, and seeks 
their unification in His grace and nature, hasten the ac- 
complishment of this most desired of His earthly consum- 
mations. 




CONTENTS. 



I. THE HIGHER LAW. 



Delivered at Amenia, New York, November, 1850, on the occasion 
of the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Page 1 

" Render unto Ccesar the things that are Ccesars's ; and unto God the 
things that are God's" — Matthew xxi. 12. 

Argument. — The need of examination of the principles of action, especially 
when these principles are in controversy. The divided duty before every citizen of 
the Free States ; loyalty to country or to conscience. On what rests the obligation to 
obey the State. I. Man the subject of law. 1. Distinction in the kind and authority 
of law. Law of body and of spirit; of sensibilities, mind, and moral being. The 
lower authoritative only, when not hostile to the higher. If man were holy, all his 
nature would work symmetrically. Sin the disturber of this harmony. 2. The civil 
government a creature of the social nature of man. It must therefore by virtue of 
its origin be in subjection to conscience, or the higher nature, if any conflict arises. 
II. How shall we know the relations of the human laws to the law of God ? By 
Conscience, by Providence, by the Scriptures. How act if such a decree is thus de- 
cided to be wrong ? Refuse to cooperate in its enforcement. Refuse to desist from 
duties it forbids. Cast all our influence against it. III. Application to the Fugitive 
Slave Bill. It comes from the State. Slavery, its nature; condemned by instincts, 
conscience, Providence, and the Bible. Our duty, to refuse obedience; to befriend 
these whom it outlaws, and to oppose it by voice and vote. IV. The plea of con- 
stitutional protection. The Constitution a creature of civil government, and there- 
fore of the social nature. It is consequently subject like that nature to the moral 
sentiments. Its words allow liberty not slavery. Our trust in Christ not the Con- 
s' Itution. Encouragements in the conflict. No slave hunters in our borders. 

(xiii) 



xiv CONTENTS. 



II. THE DEATH OE FREEDOM. 

Delivered at Wilbraham, Massachusetts, May 25, 1854, on the occa- 
sion of the Passage of the Nebraska Bill, 33 

" The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places." — 2 Samuel i. 19. 

" And Saul was consenting unto his death." — Acts viii. 1. 

" There was darkness over all the land." — Matthew xxviii. 45. 

Argument. — The nation around the corpse of Freedom. I. How was it slain ? 
By slow poison. By allowing the Constitution to recognize slavery; passing the 
first Fugitive Slave Bill; enacting the Missouri Compromise; demanding Texas; 
enacting the second Fugitive Slave Bill. Contrary movements. Present condition 
of America; the propagandist of slavery. II. Our future. Signs of resurrection ; 
opposition in Congress of the party that enacted it; public sentiment; organized 
societies; the Church; increased manumission. III. Need of humiliation and con- 
fession; of political combination against it; of prayer. 

III. THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

Delivered at Westfield, Massachusetts, June 11, 1856, on the oc- 
casion of the assault upon Charles Sumner, 57 

"But those husbandmen said, among themselves, This is the heir; 
come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." — Mark xii. 7. 

Argument. — Why Christ suffered ; how His suffering disciples participate in 
His experience, though falling infinitely below it. The position of this sufferer as 
compared with previous martyrs. Not himself assailed but his State, and her Ideas, 
organized and regnant. His assailant not a man but an Idea, organized and deter- 
mined on the supremacy I. Our guilt. History of its progress. II. Our repentance. 
How to be established. 1. By penitence. 2. Brotherly feeling toward the slave. 
3. Resumption of stolen Kansas. 4. The transfer of the government to the side of 
liberty. III. Failure destroys liberty or compels civil war. 

IV. THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

Delivered at Westfield, Massachusetts, November 16, 1856, on the 
occasion of the election of James Buchanan to the Presidency, . 87 

"And vShen I looked, behold a hand was sent unto me ; and lo, a roll 
of a book was therein ; and he spread it before me ; and it was written 
within and without ; and there was written therein lamentations, and 
mourning, and woe." — Ezekiel ii. 9, 10. 



CONTENTS. XV 

Argument. — The right and duty of ministerial utterance on national ques- 
tions proved from Bible history and orders. Especial obligations in view of 
the enormity of the national transgression. I. What has triumphed? 1. Not the 
Democratic party. 2. Slavery. Study this victor ; trace its power in a human being 
from birth to death. Robbed of name, of parents, of education, of property, of 
religion. What shall the end be if the victors retain their strength? Enslave- 
ment of Kansas; because of their purpose, their necessity, and the fact that this is 
the center of the conflict. This won, all is. 2. Extension of slavery to Oregon. 
3. Annexation of Cuba and Central America as slave States. 4. Reopening of the 
Foreign Slave Trade. 5. Suppression of freedom of speech, everywhere. 6. Adjudg- 
ing slaves as property everywhere. Slavery must make these attempts. It must 
advance or die. III. What has caused the defeat ? 1. No real national sympathy 
with the slave. 2. No earnest prayers for the victory of Freedom. 3. More anxious 
to conquer a party than to abolish slavery. IV. Encouragements. None in the 
ruling party. 1. First organized success of political anti-slavery in a single State. 

2. A stimulant to friends of liberty in the slave States to organize against slavery. 

3. The growth of the religious sentiment. 



V. CASTE THE CORNER-STONE OF AMERICAN 
SLAVERY. 

Delivered on the occasion of the State Fast, at Wilbraham, Mas- 
sachusetts, in 1854, and at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1858 ; also 
delivered at the Forsyth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
New York, 129 

" We are verily guilty concerning our brother." — Genesis xlii. 21. 

Argument. — Foundation for American Slavery. I. Not in man as man, but in 
his color or origin. Scripture stolen to array an idol. This color is declared to be 
a mark of degradation, and separation. II. This feeling, 1. General. 2. Deep- 
rooted. 3. Unnatural. Because, (1.) Not towards any other class of men. (2). They 
have the gifts of music, manners, the culinary art, aptness of imitation, wit and 
humor, patience, and sunniness of temper. (3.) No repugnance to this color, as seen 
everywhere else than in America. (4.) No disunity in spiritual nature. (5). Caused 
by social condition. (6.) Contrary to the Scriptures. 4. The feeling is the chief 
bulwark of American slavery. South could not resist the North were she free from 
this prejudice. III. How shall it be cured ? 1. Cease to dwell on the distinction of 
color. 2. Welcome those of this hue to your society. 3. Encourage them to enter 
all branches of trade. IV. Result, intermarriage; its right and fitness. True mar- 
riage. Shakespeare's foresight and courage. Othello and Desdemona. 



xvi CONTENTS. 



VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

Delivered at Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 6, 1859, on the 
occasion of the capture of Captain John Brown, 152 

" Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad." — Eccl. vii. 7. 

" lam not mad, most noble Festus." — Acts xxvi. 25. 

" So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done 
under the sun : and behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they 
had no comforter ; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, 
but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are 
already dead, more than the living which are yet alive." — Eccl. iv. 1, 2. 

Argument. — Opening of a new act. Its influence. Its purport and effect. The 
beginning of the end. It has taught the slaveholder his weakness. It has strength- 
ened the heart of the slave. His right to liberty, even through blood. It will tend 
to unite us to our enslaved brethren; stimulate all peaceful modes of assault on 
slavery; abate the haughty assumptions of the slave power. The benefit of his 
death, if he dies. Honors the American scaffold, as Vane, Eussell, and Sidney did 
England's. His future fame. 

VII. THE MARTYR. 

Address on the occasion of the execution of John Brown, December 
2, 1859, 169 

Argument. — A new date in American Annals. A national day in character and 
interest. The righteousness of his deed. His right to interfere to save his fellow- 
men. Its wisdom. He wins the fight in his dying. The slayer slain. 

VIII. TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

Delivered at Cambridge, November 11, 1860, on the occasion of 
electing Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, 177 

" / will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The 
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." — Exodus xv. 1. 

" But promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor 
from the south. , But God is judge : He putteth down one, and setteth 
up another." — Ps. lxxv. 6, 7. 

" Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, the Stone 
which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner ; 
This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. — Matt. xxi. 42. 



CONTENTS. xvn 

Argument. — Difference between this year and last. The conflict. One ques- 
tion, Slavery or Liberty. I. Cause. 1. The growth of conscience as to the nature 
and effects of slavery. Begun in colonial life, developed in the Revolutionary era, 
but postponed because of the pressure of another duty. Decline in the post-revolu- 
tionary period. Revived under Garrison. 2. Fear of the slave power. II. Con- 
sequences of this victory. 1. It will suppress efforts to extend slavery. 2. Sets us 
right before the world. 3. Insures the speedy abolition of slavery. III. Progress 
of this work; its certain consummation. Future blessed condition of the free 
South. 

IX. LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

Written from the army at Washington, the Relay House, and Balti- 
more, during the first three months of the war, 213 

I. To Arms. — The Gathering of the States. A war night in Faneuil Hall. First 
war Sunday. Opening the way to the Capitol. Camp in the Capitol. Camp at the 
Relay. Smoke before the Fire. II. Slavery Dying. The Look of the Land. How 
Slaves Talk. The Carrolton Manor. A Slave Pen. A Rational Beast and his Pos- 
sibilities. Arlington when first Captured. A very Tender Conscience. III. Profit 
and Loss after Bull Run. 

X. THE DAY DAWNS. 

Delivered at Newark, New Jersey, March 9, 1862, on the occasion ^ 

of the first Abolition Proclamation, 269 

" The year of my redeemed is come.^ — Isaiah lxiii. 4. 

Argument. — I. Effects of this proclamation at home and abroad. The begin- 
ning of this movement at Boston. Opposition. "War. II. Results of this pro- 
clamation. 1. Erect the national mind on the nature of slavery. 2. Rob the slave 
power of foreign support. 3. Encourage the slave. 4. Unify the Republic. 5. Sub- 
due the earth to liberty. 

XI. ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

Letter to the London Watchman, written from Paris, July 4, 1862, . 291 

Argument. — Interest of England in the American war. Ignorance of its origin 
and aims. Her conflict of ideas with America. Why America did not abolish slavery 
at the beginning of the war. The rebellion struck at the Union, and the Union 
must be defended. England never extirpates its cause when suppressing a rebel- 
lion. Ireland. Sepoys. The United States devoted to Freedom. Her struggle for 
Democracy against monarchical ideas. Difficulty of European peoples to under- 
stand this struggle. They are in a lower plane of civil life. America fighting for 
b 



xviii CONTENTS. 

the liberties of the world. European kingdoms to become European states. The 
British People versus British Government. America no quarrel with crowned 
heads as such. The advent of British democracy; its conflicts and victory. The 
ultimate Democratic oneness of England and America. 



» XII. THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

\ 

Delivered before the New England Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, at the High Street Church, Charlestown, Mas- 
sachusetts, on the occasion of the annual State Fast, April 27, 
1863, 317 

" Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of 
malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and 
truth. — Cor. v. 8. 

"Arise; shine." — Isa. lx. 1. 

" All nations shall call you blessed ; for ye shall be a delightsome land, 
saith the Lord of Hosts." — Mai. iii. 12. 

Argument. — Conceit of nations as to their mission. Ours. I. Universal toler- 
ation with acknowledgment of Christianity. Difference between the first idea and 
all previous national usage. In Israel faith and loyalty one. Christianity con- 
quered Paganism at the Milvian bridge. How it has ruled Europe since. Nowhere 
equality of faith except in America. French Protestants ; English Dissenters. 
Late development of it here. Colonial union of Church and State. Evils this 
toleration breeds. 1. Irreligion of public men. 2. Forbids all pulpit utterance upon 
national sins. Difference between this course and previous support of the govern- 
ment by the clergy. Charles Martel; Cromwell; Geneva. It brought about the 
alliance of slavery and the Southern Church. It bred infidelity. Christianity must 
be acknowledged as the American faith. II. The second mission of America is to 
exhibit the fraternity of man. Our detestation of this demand. Our duty, to ex- 
punge the word " colored " from the Church; to give the man of color access to 
every field of effort. Its obligation and real popularity. Peter's prejudice; how 
cured. Lybica Sybilla and Sojourner Truth. The Church the redeemer of society. 
Each must esteem the other better than himself. The Brahmin taught. 

XIII. THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO, 

An address delivered before the Church Anti-Slavery Society at 
Tremont Temple, June 10, 18G3 361 

Au&UMENT. — The unity of American and Hebrew abolition. God's decree of 
liberty for Israel. His like decree to them against caste. The position of the New 



CONTENTS. XIX 

Testament against slavery. Its Gentile church, like the Mosaic, composed largely 
of slaves. The European church abolished slavery. The mixed and weak position 
of the American church on this sin. Its duty now to exhibit penitence, by abolish- 
ing the root of slavery, caste. The absurdity of this feeling. 



XIV. THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

Delivered in Boston, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26 j 1863, . 373 

" They shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome 
them." — Revelation xvii. 14. 

Argument. — What is the Millennium ? The triumph of Christ over Satan. Its 
progress in the earlier ages, in the times of, and immediately after, Christ. It 
has destroyed idolatry, or man's disunion with God. It must destroy man's dis- 
union from man. The forms of that disunion here contending against Christianity. 
Chattel slavery and servility in civil governments. Artificial social barriers must 
be removed and Man unified. The struggle to work out these ends in our war. 
Their happy result. The influence of our success upon the advancement of the 
world. The victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 



XV. WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

Delivered in Boston, May 15, 1864, on the occasion of General 
Grant's Advance on Richmond, 393 

" And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed ; 
take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai : see, I have 
given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his 
land." — Joshua viii. 1. 

Argument. — The excitement of the hour. Propriety of dwelling upon it. God 
in the battles going forward. Why Joshua was defeated. Why we. How he 
repented and conquered. How we are repenting and shall therefore conquer. 
McClellan's refusal to let the soldiers hear anti-slavery songs insured his over- 
throw. The later failures because we would not treat all our soldiers equally. 
Grant refuses to advance on Richmond until their pay is equalized. Congress 
delays, and then refuses to give colored soldiers the same pay as white except they 
had been born free. The President shoots one for mutiny who refuses to serve on 
other conditions than those under which he had enlisted. Grant will not stir till 
this change is effected. The nation of no consequence to God unless it obeys His 
will. This obedience wins His approval and insures our victory. 



XX CONTENTS. 



XVI. THEEE SUMMERS OE WAR: THE REVOLUTION AND 
THE REBELLION. 

Delivered in Boston, July 4, 1864, 407 

" Whose are the fathers." — Romans ix. 5. 

Argument. — Comparing the Revolution and Rebellion at the end of three years. 
1. Military. How the Revolution stood ; its disasters and depressions. Our posi- 
tion; its superiority. 2. Moral. Attempt to seduce the leaders to return to the 
British crown. Its failure. Our progress in Liberty and Union. 3. Financial. 
The downfall of Continental paper. Extravagance of the people. 4. Other troubles. 
Mutiny. Sectional prejudices. Feuds among the officers. Our superiority in all 
these respects. The likeness of the causes for which we are contending. 

XVII. THE CRISIS HOUR. 

Delivered in Boston, on the National East, August 4, 1864, . . . 421 

" Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways : for why will ye die, house 
of Israel?" — Ezekiel xxxiii. 11. 

Argument. — The length and bloodiness of the war. The same number of 
combatants as of slaves. The refusal of Congress and the President to confess the 
national sin. 1. Our perils. We may fail. Because we are false to Christ as a peo- 
ple. The national impiety. Because we are false to our Democratic pretensions, in 
despising our fellow-men. 2. Our duties. Prayer. Conformity of our acts with 
our professions. Support the church and nation. 3. Encouragements. Slavery 
practically dead. The despised slave wonderfully uplifted. Our future success 
certain. 

XVIII. THE WORLD WAR: ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOC- 
RACY. 

Delivered in Boston, on the occasion of the Annual State East, 
April 4, 1864, 439 

"Behold, this One is set for the fall and the rising again of many." 
— Luke ii. 34. 

Argument. — America at war with Europe from the beginning of her Revolu- 
tion. Inconsistency in expecting sympathy and aid from England and France. 
I. Three ideas born into human society with the American nation. 1. A successful 



CONTENTS. XXI 

revolution in favor of human rights. All other successful revolutions only con- 
cerned the people that accomplished them. America felt that she was fighting for 
the world. 2. Formation of colonies into separate and semi-sovereign States. 
3. Organizing of States into a Federal Union. II. The effect of this work on Eu- 
rope. It brought forth the French Revolution, and awakened like spirit every- 
where. III. Why it failed. Because of the hostility of the priesthood, the alliance 
of kings, offensive and defensive, and our Neutrality : the last was the chief cause 
of its failure. The error of Washington. Its results ; developed slavery, caused 
indifference to European struggles, and created foreign Neutrality against our- 
selves. IV. The march of our Ideas. How Britain preserved her institutions 
against them: by war with France; by suppressing freedom of speech. V. The 
present state of the war. Alliance against America. England's leadership in 
it. Wherefore. VI. Future of Europe. Democratic uprisings. Poland, Italy, 
and Greece assuming the American form; equal rights for all, Free States, and 
Federal Union. Conflicts preliminary to its success. VII. Impediments being 
removed. European Democrats making common cause. The Church beginning to 
cooperate. America must remove the last obstacle, and openly befriend their 
struggling nationalities. 

XIX. THE END NEAR. 

Delivered in Boston, September 11, 1864, on the occasion of the 
Capture of Atlanta, 473 

" The morning cometh." — Isaiah xxi. 12. 

" Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Day-spring from 
on high hath visited us." — Luke i. 78. 

Argument. — The waning condition of " the Confederacy." Analogy of a like 
prostration of the North. Our duty ; to stand firmly ; to support the government in 
the present national Presidential struggle at the polls ; to preach and practice the 
whole truth involved in this conflict. 

XX. THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
Delivered in Boston, January 1, 1865, 489 

" The year of the right hand of the Most Sigh." — Ps. lxxiii. 11. 

Argument. — England's Annus Mirabilis, just two hundred years ago save one. 
The superiority of America's. I. Our military progress during the year. II. Our 
Political Contrast of this election and that of 1864. 1. In the circumstances under 
which it was fought. (1.) Slavery a unit and universal in the South then; ceased 
now. No sale of men and women. No separation. Milder treatment. (2.) It the 
freedom of the election. (3.) In the advanced principles for which it fought. No 



xxii CONTENTS. 

extension of slavery its motto then; no existence of it now. 2. It established 
three essential ideas : Union ; how mightily this sentiment has grown and pre- 
vailed. 3. Liberty, its progress more vital and more marvellous. Democracy, or 
the equality of the rights of all men. The Supreme Court then and now. 4. Con- 
sequences. Liberation of Europe. Fraternization of America. 5. Duties. Aboli- 
tion of all prejudices. Granting to all, civil equality and fraternity. The church 
should grow in this grace. The summons and blessing of God. 

XXI. THE VIAL POURED OUT ON THE SEAT OE THE BEAST. 

Delivered in Boston, March 5, 1865, on the occasion of the Eall of 
Charleston, 517 

" And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast ; 
and his kingdom was full of darkness ; and they gnawed their tongues 
for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their sores, and 
repented not of their deeds." — Revelation xvi. 10, 11. 

Argument. — Extreme contrasts in the calls of the government and the war to 
the sanctuary; sorrowful, joyful. The character of this summons. Draw near to 
this burning and consider. I. The Sin. Why the Seat of the Beast. How far its 
atrocities exceeded those of any other spot in Christendom. Paris, London, Rome. 
The condition of the majority of the people of Charleston. Chief in this sin because 
she supported it by law, society, and religion; because she saw first and sought 
most the destruction of Abolitionism. II. Her Punishment. The Yial poured out. 
Compared with New Orleans, Nashville, Savannah, all other cities. Even Richmond 
suffers less. III. The instrument by which her punishment is effected. Her own 
hand and her own slaves. The soldiers burned her, her slaves rule her. IV. Les- 
sons. 1. No greatness aught against God. 2. The earth to be regenerated. 
Charleston to be renewed in righteousness. 3. God impartial. If He spai'es not 
them, not us. Unless we repent we shall all likewise perish. V. Future duties 
beckon us. This victory but a beacon. Will we follow ? 



XXII. JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

Delivered in Boston, April 9, 1865, on the occasion of the Flight of 
Jefferson Davis from Richmond, 529 

" In very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee 
My power ; and that My name may be declared throughout oil the earth." 
— Ex. ix. 16. 

Argument. — Historic parallels. Plutarch's: Napoleon and Caesar. Propriety 
of considering this analogy. The victory ours. Proper study of the war from the 



CONTENTS. xxiii 

side of God, that is from the side of the slave. Thus we study the Hebrew eman- 
cipation; thus will the future this. What stood in the way of emancipation? 
1. The words and construction of the Constitution. 2. Aversion of the North to 
Abolitionism. 3. The purpose of the South to prevent it. The first two over- 
come by allowing- the last to become strong. This strengthened itself in the char- 
acter of Jefferson Davis. I. Resemblance between him and Pharaoh. 1. In free- 
dom of action. No compulsion on either. 2. In character. (1.) Clear perception 
of the effect of any concession. (2.) Steadiness of purpose. Resistance of begin- 
nings to submission. (3.) Power to develop like strength in others. 3. In work. 
(1.) Pharaoh only known from his connection with emancipation, so will Davis 
only be known. (2.) How each resisted in every step of the conflict. 4. In fate, 
Pharaoh perished in power if not in life; so will Davis sink into weakness and 
obscurity. II. Why did God raise him up ? 1. To release enslaved millions. 2. To 
give them especial honor. 3. To unite all mankind in one. 



XXIII. THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

Delivered in Boston, April 23, 1865, on the occasion of the Death of 
Abraham Lincoln, 551 

" Thy gentleness hath made me great." — Ps. xviii. 35. 

" He saved others, himself he cannot save." — Matt, xxvii. 42. 

"All nations shall call him blessed." — Ps. lxxii. 17. 

Argument. — National agony of sorrow. I. The character of Abraham Lincoln. 
1. Honesty. 2. Guilelessness. 3. Impartiality of judgment. 4. No step back- 
ward. 5. Playfulness. 6. Integrity. 7. Love. Repose of the nation in his love. 
This causes the present anguish of heart. II. His career. Two obstacles to be 
overcome, Disunion and Slavery. The war of the elements. His fitness for uniting 
the North. His conciliatory nature and policy prevented Northern disruption, 
and divided the border. His great act. His murderer not -Booth, not Lee ; a 
greater criminal than both, Slavery. How shall his death be avenged ? By greater 
faithfulness to the cause for which he died. His growing faithfulness. His dying 
words and deeds. Last inaugural. Entry into Richmond. His work done. Ours 
before us. Obedience to highest duties the only imitation of him. Will we thus 
lament and follow him? 



XXIV. PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

Delivered in Boston, July 9, 1865, 581 

" They are dead that sought the young Child's life." — Matthew ii. 20. 
" Tlie Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that He sware 



XXIV CONTENTS. 

unto their fathers ; and there stood not a man of all their enemies "before 
them ; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed 
not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house 
of Israel ; all came to pass." — Joshua xxi. 43-45. 

Argument.— The first Fourth of July after the Revolution and this; analogy. 
The national joy. I. Blessings of this peace. 1. Peace itself. Horrors of war; on 
the field; to the maimed soldiers: to the bereaved. 2. It restores the supremacy 
of the law. 3. Bestows liberty. Might have been without liberty. Contrast with 
the last five anniversaries of Independence. II. Demands. The abolition of social 
and political slavery. The outer fetters fallen. What those were. Extract from 
auction bills of the Slave Mart of Charleston. Just punishment of God. Past prog- 
ress assures the future unity of the race. All lands coming to America. All here 
may be regenerated. 

\ XXV. AMEEICA'S PAST AND FUTUKE. 

Delivered on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1868, at Medford, 
Massachusetts, on the occasion of the Election of President 
Grant, 603 

" To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant." — 
Isaiah Ivi. 12. 

Argument. — The conflict of Chaos and the calm of Creation. I. Antiquity of 
Slavery. The woman the slave to her husband; the other children to the first-born. 
Its prevalence. Judea the only Free State when Christ came. Her fall. The 
deliverance of Europe from it, through the Church. II. Its prevalence outside her 
territory and faith. Rise of African slavery. How it reached and spread in America. 
Error of Columbus, and all that followed him, of every language and religion. 
III. God's controversy with it. Corruption of Church and State. Slow renova- 
tion. Instruments by which it was wrought out. Culmination of the work in 
war. IV. General Grant; his foresight of the greatness of the struggle; his ob- 
scurity ; his military genius; the cause he served; saving the nation and destroy- 
ing slavery. Advantage over all other generals in that respect. Y. Meaning of the 
election. Order; Safety; Progress, and Perfection in political and social liberty. 
Aversion to color must change to love. Amalgamation God's work, act, and 
decree. Signs of its advent. Happy results to all the world from the fraternity of 
man in America. Other reforms. Temperance. "Woman's ballot. The glowing 
future. Christ over all, God blessed forever. 

Notes, 631 




THE HIGHER LAW. 



Render therefore vnto Cjesar the things that are Cesar's, 
and unto God the things that are God's." — Matt. xxii. 21. 

T is well frequently to lay bare the springs of our 
being, to examine their nature, and see if their 
present movement is in accordance with their 
original design. 
This is especially necessary when conflicting sentiments 
obtain respecting a course of action which we are required 
to pursue. When we cannot remain idle spectators of a 
contest which is raging around us, but from the orders of 
leaders in the battle are compelled to take definite posi- 
tions, then it is our solemn duty to examine the nature of 
these commands, that we may see whether we must obey 
or resist them. 

Such is the condition in which every person is placed 
throughout the Free States. The government of the 
country has arrayed its mighty strength upon the side of 
Slavery, and issues its mandate to all the people, to lend 

* A sermon preached at Amenia, New York, November, 1850, on the 
occasion of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. See Note I. 
1 U> 



2 THE HIGHER LAW. 

their aid in its defense. The conflict between the eternal 
foes of freedom and slavery has by this act changed us 
from unconcerned spectators, if we had chosen to assume 
that position, into actors, and requires every one to take 
his place under one of the hostile banners. If, therefore, 
there were no previous claims upon our feelings of brother- 
hood, we cannot avoid considering- our duties under this 
assertion of the will of the State. 

In such circumstances it is our highest duty to examine 
the Nature and Extent of the Authority of Human Govern- 
ment, and to see if the late decrees of. our nation are in 
agreement or hostility with its delegated rights. 

Man is created subject to law. Enactments originating 
in the wisdom of God control every faculty of body and 
soul. In whatever direction he seeks activity, he finds laws 
inducing the desire and limiting its gratification. Around 
him as well as within him ever operates the same infinite 
energy under the guidance of the same infinite wisdom, 
cooperating through all the lower orders of being with his 
highest faculties, or by the same obedient officers modifying 
or suppressing their unhealthy activity. The world with- 
out us is our servant or our scourge, according as we are the 
servants or enemies of God within us. 

But while there is no portion of our nature free from 
the authority of law, there is an evident distinction in the 
degree of this authority. As a being intended for different 
states of existence, and for different duties in each state, 
the Divine Lawgiver must assign to each faculty authority 
proportionate to its original design. Each is allowed full 
powers within its own borders, with restrictions against any 
intrusion upon the rights of adjacent faculties, and un- 
hesitating submission to the Conscience, the governor of the 
whole realm, and through that to the Creator and Proprietor 
of All. 

The laws that regulate our body are felt to be inferior to 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 3 

those which control the soul. Though constructed with 
measureless skill, and acting- under impulses of divine origin, 
the body is only a servant of the soul. Its mechanism, 
its vitality, its appetites, its instincts are all acknowledged 
to be subordinate to other powers which inherit it for a 
season, and which can mar its structure or even suppress 
the instincts necessary to its self-preservation with the ap- 
proval of the Divine Author of both natures. 

Among the faculties of the soul there exists no less dis- 
tinction of rank and authority. There are powers which 
seem especially designed for the present life, whose action 
is essential to its earthly preservation, happiness, and 
progress. There are others that are evidently of a higher 
grade and sublimer destiny, which, for the most part, are 
kept in abeyance here, and allowed only in rare instances 
to assume the supremacy and to reveal the latent powers 
of their being. There are yet others that oversweep all 
these inferior energies, and claim their obedience on penalty 
of leaving them to the fatal anarchy of the lowest passions. 

These faculties are called generically the propensities or 
sensibilities, the intellect and the moral nature. Most of 
the propensities, though capable of cooperating with the 
higher powers of the soul, in by far the greater portion of 
their activity and the greater part of mankind, act indepen- 
dently of all moral guidance. They are confined too, largely, 
to this state of existence. Self-love is generally considered 
as the basis solely of earthly pleasure ; esteem regards 
earthly favor ; desire for existence includes mainly a pas- 
sion for earthly life ; curiosity is limited to. earthly inquisi- 
tion ; and sociality to the divers forms of affections arising 
from, and centering in, earthly relations. 

In our devotion to this portion of our nature, the de- 
mands of the intellect are often neglected. Passion rules 
the hour, rules every hour, and Thought toils as its bond 
slave. The mind is chiefly studious to obtain means for 



4 THE HIGHER LAW. 

gratifying the propensities. It seeks gain, frames plans, 
pursues studies chiefly that vanity, pride, or lower lusts may 
have the larger indulgence. Only in occasional moments 
does it tower before mankind, when the over-sated passion 
reveals its own inferiority, or when some Leibnitz or New- 
ton has mounted above the narrow skies that bound their 
vision, and transmitted some of their discoveries to these 
slaves of mere desire. 

Above the intellect rises the moral nature, and claims the 
service of both these classes of faculties. It asserts its 
authority over them by allowing them, if rebellious, to run 
into ruinous excess of riot and of skepticism, and by enabling 
them, if obedient to its dictates, to grow harmoniously and 
happily, after their original design. 

It was not intended that this diversity of constitution 
should lead to discord and mutual injury. The law of 
the body had no original hostility to that of the soul. 
Our selfish and our social nature were made to act in 
unison. The duties pertaining to earthly life had no es- 
sential opposition, but rather an essential oneness with 
those that lead out to another existence. The mind, and 
heart, and conscience were designed to be as harmonious 
as the nature of God himself, in whose image they are 
created. These complex duties and interests, so marvelous- 
ly interwoven, have no constitutional defects or variances. 
There was no entangling of threads, no jarring of chord 
with chord, as they came from the hand divine. It was a 
microcosm combining in outward form and inward action 
the same multiplicity in unity, and complexity in simpli- 
city, that is exhibited by that infinite macrocosm, the 
universe itself. Under their united action every institution 
of man, domestic, social, or civil, every outgrowth of his 
nature, could have been established and matured without pos- 
sibility of imperfection or collision. The family would have 
been an harmonious unit, full of life and love. The State 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 5 

would have respected every right, and aided while it em- 
braced all minor movements in its rounded fullness. The 
Church would have been identical with the State, though su- 
perior to it, informing it with the more subtile life of the soul, 
hanging its humbler dome in the heaven of heavens. Art, 
commerce, handicraft, every form and force of activity, would 
have each moved righteously and efficiently in its own sphere, 
while they aided, rather than impeded, the congenital voca- 
tions. Earth and Man would have been one with Heaven 
and God. 

But a hostile element invades the soul, and anarchy 
prevails. Satan mars the machinery of God. Excess of 
indulgence or of abstinence becomes the mode of human 
action, and ignorance of the true law, or inability to pursue 
it steadily, prevents their perfect harmony and growth. This 
disorder possesses every man, and is revealed in all the or- 
ganizations into which his wants and nature are expanded. 

"The trail of the serpent is over them all." 

Under such conditions, it becomes us to study carefully 
our duty in every relation we sustain, whether to ourselves, 
our fellow, or our God, remembering that all these rela- 
tions meet and melt into Him who is their only Source and 
everlasting Life. 

Among these qualities are those feelings and ties that 
compose the organism called the State, or civil government. 
The last has the narrower significance. Civil government 
means, primarily, the authority of a city. It shows that a 
condensed population gathered around competent leaders, 
subdued and then ruled the scattered peoples beyond their 
walls. But the State — that which stands — has the calm 
look of permanence, the solid shape of eternity. It ex- 
presses the confidence and the restfulness of man. "Here 
I have peace. Here I have room for the quiet growth of 
all my being. These arms of power are around me to shield 



6 THE HIGHER LAW. 

and to support. By it my weakness is made strong, my 
littleness enlarged, my single-hand made myriad-handed, my 
poverty is changed to unmeasured affluence, and my paltry 
personality becomes majestic and mighty as the oneness of 
the sea." 

Well may we be careful how we assail or undermine 
this hope of the Race. Well may enmity to its will be 
branded by the word second only to murder, if second to 
that, in the abhorrence of man — treason. For what is he 
who destroys individual life, compared with him who slays 
the State ? 

But if the State has such a root in the instincts of man- 
kind, it, too, must beware lest it pervert its office from 
the protector to the destroyer of its people. For as high 
as it is exalted in love and power by its willing subjects, 
when it is an instrument of justice, so low will it plunge in 
the execrations of its people, in weakness within and abroad, 
if it make itself the instrument of injustice. Exalted to 
heaven, it shall be cast down to hell. 

In this hour, then, when the people are perplexed by 
the action of the State, it is our solemn duty to examine 
the ground of its origin, and the -relations it sustains to the 
higher law of our nature, — the voice of God in the soul of 
man, — before we consider how its late enactments comport 
with that law, and what are our individual duties under the 
circumstances it has forced upon us. 

Civil government exists by the will of God. The social 
element in man in its development into its natural forms 
reveals itself in that of the State. This is its last expres- 
sion. Under it this propensity has the fullest range and 
action. Solitary man becomes the family, the community, 
the nation. 

But since the idea of nationality springs from this pro- 
pensity, its government must be under the supervision of 
the faculties which govern its source ; that is, the Judgment 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 7 

and Conscience. If not, then the gregarious habits and 
laws of beasts are civil government, for their instinct is 
identical with this propensity in its original action. 

If this desire for social organization originates with our 
Creator, and is placed under the control of our intelligent and 
moral nature, then must it be developed only in accordance 
with the will of the Creator, and under the direction of His 
law written in our hearts and in His Word. It cannot grow 
to its due and destined height without coming into con- 
nection, and perhaps into collision, with other faculties and 
duties. Only the appointed ruler of the soul can decide 
between conflicting passions, or lead them each to their 
proper fullness, and so make the whole an harmonious 
unit. 

Since, then, the process of forming a civil government 
must be guided by our moral nature, the duties we owe it, 
in its right or wrong procedure, are all referred to the same 
tribunal. Before the judgment seat of the Conscience must 
it stand. If that condemns it, then must it plead guilty ; 
if that forbids obedience to its wrong behests, they must 
be disobeyed ; if that demands that it should repeal its laws 
and make them conformable to the law of God, it must 
hasten to obey on pain of the righteous displeasure and sure 
judgments of God, who will sustain the authority of the 
Conscience, His vicegerent, against all combinations and ail 
adversaries. 

Two questions here arise : — 

1st. How shall we know when the decrees of the State 
are inconsistent with the Will of God ? 

2d. How shall we act when we are satisfied that such an 
inconsistency exists ? 

I. How shall we know when the decrees of the State 
are inconsistent with the Will of God ? 

We should include the institutions with the acts of 
government, for the error of its customs usually precedes 



8 THE HIGHER LAW. 

and produces errors in its acts. The leprosy lies deep 
within in most cases of spiritual disease. Society is wicked 
inwardly before it is formally. It is the corrupt tree that 
bringeth forth corrupt fruit. 

This should be the more carefully noticed, since trans- 
gressors are always inclined to shelter their conduct under 
the. prevailing power of the evil that produces it. Intem- 
perance exists, — therefore it must be legally protected. 
Idolatry is universal, — therefore it is wrong to resist it. 
Kings reign, — therefore they rule by right divine, and dis- 
obedience to any of their behests is treason against God. 

This plea has been the strongest weapon of offense and 
defense in our great controversy. Slavery exists in society, 
and is recognized in the Constitution ; therefore edicts for 
its protection are right. And all hostility to it, or them, 
is contrary to the preservation of the State and the Will 
of God. 

Are there any means of learning our duty, other than 
what the laws and customs of society itself afford ? Has 
God transferred all His authority over the human soul to the 
State ? Has He made that the solitary receptacle of His 
wisdom, and declared that obedience to its mandates is the 
sole ground of acceptance with Him ? Has He delegated 
to it power over the future destiny of the immortal beings 
■intrusted to its care, saying to its governors, "Whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what- 
soever thou, shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " ? 
If this is not the case, but if, on the contrary, civil govern- 
ment derives its strength and stability from laws originating 
out of and above it, then is it binding upon us to seek to 
know what these means of moral illumination are, and 
where they are to be found. 

As God is one, His moral law must be one and the same, 
in whatever way it may be revealed to us. He has chosen 
three ways of revelation — through Conscience, Providence, 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 9 

and His Word. Whatever these clearly agree in must be 
of the highest authenticity and authority. 

Our moral being, though rendered imperfect and obtuse 
by reason of sin, is still, in some respects, true to its original 
character. The needle may be drawn by wrong attractions, 
for the moment, from its true direction ; but still within it 
dwells the force that is ever pressing it against all temp- 
tations to point to its pole. Conscience, however perverted, 
ever possesses this instinct. In respect to some of its 
duties, no amount of influence can destroy its attraction 
towards the true and the excellent. Xo state of barbarism 
has sunk so low as to make disobedience to parents, in- 
gratitude, or maternal hatred of offspring appear right. Xo 
matter what brutality of degradation may have obscured 
these sentiments, — they still and ever live. They cannot be 
destroyed. They spring up spontaneously, and no edict of 
the State, no seduction of priestcraft, no brutality of con- 
dition, has been able to suppress them. Maternal love will 
yearn over its helpless babe. Gratitude will gush forth 
from the most hardened subject of unmerited kindness. 
Reverence for parents will arise in the heart of every child. 
Every effort of the State to destroy them only proves its 
own weakness and folly. They are above and in advance of 
human power, and to them must it bow if it seek exten- 
sion or permanence. 

These instinctive actions of our moral nature are con- 
firmed by its cooler, if not clearer, utterances. The Con- 
science sits sovereign. However much beguiled from its 
steadfastness by the force of education, custom, fear, or 
flattery, it cannot be wholly perverted. It is still employed 
by our Creator as His representative in the soul. It is still 
one of His appointed guides to us in all perplexed and 
devious ways. Though often drawn into a seeming' support 
of sin, in its depths it has remained faithful to the truth. 
It has favored persecution, because it thought it was thus 



10 THE HIGHER LAW. 

doing* service both to God and its victim. It has never 
approved of incest, adultery, blasphemy, murder, any vice 
which could not steal some garment of virtue in which to 
hide its hatefulness. This faculty, therefore, is a chief ally 
in the detection of the will of God. If enlightened and 
assisted by its Creator, it may become to us, as it is to the 
sinless of Heaven, the oracle of God, — 

" A light to guide, a rod 
To check the erring, and reprove." 

Its slightest suggestion demands our most solemn atten- 
tion. Its positive decisions cannot be opposed or evaded 
without bringing us into condemnation with God, and sub- 
jecting us, if unrepentant, to the full measure of His just 
indignation. 

Another mode of discovering the will of God is by His 
Providence. As He rules over all kingdoms and ages, a 
faithful seeker of His will can draw many safe conclusions 
from the rise and fall of customs and opinions. He will 
discern two great laws. Nothing enacted by God for the 
race of man has ever died out of society. Temporary in- 
stitutions of His planting, like the Jewish government, may 
disappear ; but then only to reappear in a fuller and finer 
form. No influences, however strong, or united, or persistent, 
have been able to extirpate or to permanently retard these 
divine germs. On the other hand, no principle nor practice 
in opposition to the law of God has been able to gain and 
retain enduring sway. Though upheld by every interest 
and fortified by every power which the god of this world 
could summon to his aid, though fed by the passions, the 
prejudice, the timidity, the ambition of man, they have 
shrunk before the breath of the Almighty, and have either 
faded slowly away before the gradual diffusion of His truth, 
or have been suddenly consumed by the brightness of His 
coming. Idolatry, atheism, absolutism, infanticide, witch- 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 11 

craft, what evils that have ruled mankind with a rod of iron, 
has He not broken in pieces as a potter's vessel ? In 
these great laws written along the ages, the will of God 
and the duty of man can be most vividly discerned. 

The last mode He has adopted to make known His 
wishes, which are to be our law, is in His writings. In 
them we have eternal truth. They are a lamp unto our 
feet, and a light unto our path. Not that every difficulty 
we meet on that path is especially noted in this chart of our 
voyage ; but the general principles that fit these particular 
cases are scattered over all its pages, run, a stream divine, 
through its entire limits. If wild and wicked fantasies have 
sought refuge under its panoply, if single passages have 
been wrested from their connected and evident meaning to 
the support of criminal opinions and the destruction of their 
advocates, still these perversions of men of corrupt minds 
do not disturb its marvelous unity and consistency. They 
may teach us not to seek to shelter our depraved propen- 
sities under its sacred shadow. They do teach us to seek 
prayerfully its real and consistent meaning. They do not 
deprive us of its counsel and support in matters of honest 
inquiry and conscientious desire to know and do the will of 
our Father which is in heaven. And if we find any local 
word in seeming hostility to the sense of right, we must 
seek to adapt that expression to its declarations of universal 
application rather than to sacrifice these truths at the shrine 
of permitted but condemned infirmities. 

If, when thus examined, we find the whole drift of its 
teachings, whether of precept or example, coincident with 
the course of Providence, the declarations of Conscience, and 
the instincts of Humanity, we have the strongest possible 
ground for assurance. 

Hence we conclude that any act which violates the 
instincts of our nature, clashes with the decisions of Con- 
science, deviates from the path of Providence, and disagrees 



12 THE HIGHER LAW. 

with the Word of God, is clearly contrary to His will, and 
must be treated as an enemy of mankind. 

But, if it is possible for us to come to any positive con- 
clusions upon the moral quality of any decree of State, and 
if these divinely appointed arbiters upon the case have de- 
cided that it is wrong, then the question arises : — 

II. How shall we act in reference to the immoraldecree ? 

1. We should refuse to cooperate* in enforcing it. It 
has been not unfrequently asserted in the present strife 
of opinion, that we are bound actively to support a law, 
however bad, so long as it remains on the statute books. 
It is a law of the land. Obedience to its behests is the 
first duty of a virtuous citizen. But, as we have already 
proved, civil government is an institution founded on an 
inferior element of our nature, and hence has no power to 
bend the higher faculties to its will, unless it first conforms 
to their requirements. 

We know that in our private action we are compelled to 
refuse compliance to any habit which opposes the decrees 
of Conscience. No evil desire, however strong, however 
habitual, hoAvever essential, seemingly, to our comfort, and 
even to our existence, can rightfully command the cooper- 
ation of the will. One's vicious habits may have become 
so powerful that their indulgence is absolutely necessary 
to the preservation of his life. Yet if he obeys them, he 
saves his life and loses his soul. " If thine eye offend thee, 
pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for 
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that 
thy whole body should be cast into hell." 

In the family, the earliest form in which this social nature 
reveals itself, the same law obtains. Though the obliga- 
tions of its members to its general laws have the clearest 
approval of the Creator, yet it has often been true that a 
man must forsake his father and mother, wife and child, if 
he would be Christ's disciple. Will a Christian not say that 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 13 

circumstances may arise which will make it supremely 
necessary for the child to refuse compliance with his 
parents' commands ? that he cannot obey his Father in 
heaven without disobeying his father on earth ? And shall 
our personal habits and family ties both be sundered in 
obedience to the will of God, and we still be compelled to 
assist in enforcing a statute of society, which is far more 
at enmity with the law of God, and injurious to His cause, 
than any private practice can possibly be ? If we must 
refuse to obey ourselves or our parents when ordered into 
sin, much more must we refuse obedience to the more sinful 
and more dangerous demands of government. 

2. But there is an additional duty imposed upon us. We 
must not only refuse to assist in the execution of an unright- 
eous law, — we are required of God to refuse to desist from 
those duties whose performance this law has forbidden. 

Many may have moral courage enough to refuse to do a 
wicked act, and not have sufficient to nerve them to do a 
righteous one in opposition to the ungodly decree. Many 
a follower of Christ has shrunk from a defense of His 
cause, when they would have equally shrunk from a denial 
of Him. Yet there are claims which our Maker has upon 
us, compliance with which is essential to our growth in 
grace, and even to the possession of His favor. " He that 
is not for Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with 
Me scattereth abroad." Were it not so, the principles of 
the Gospel never could spread through the world. Sin has 
gained possession of the hearts and the heads of men. It 
has organized governments, and established itself in the high 
places of influence and authority. It would be careless 
respecting passive resistance to its demands, save when 
prompted by its instinctive hatred of goodness to pour 
upon the servant of God the fury of its malice. It is 
only by doing what is impiously forbidden that the soul 
gains the approval of God and extends His dominions. 



14 THE HIGHER LAW. 

The history of Christianity affords innumerable examples 
of this obligation. From the career of Christ to that of 
His latest disciple who has thus followed his Master, come 
to us lessons of instruction and encouragement. Those 
who passed through great tribulation, who fought the good 
fight, who opposed the world, the flesh, and the devil, and 
are now surrounding the throne of God, esteem it their 
chief honor that they trod the path of Duty, though human 
customs, opinion, edicts, and power combined to keep them 
motionless, or to force them upon the broad and crowded 
road of popular, legal, governmental sin. 

3. There is still another duty, coextensive with the law 
which it opposes. 

We are required to cast our influence against it, and to 
endeavor to create a public sentiment which shall nullify its 
action and obtain its repeal. 

There may be some unholy edicts which the majority of 
the subjects of government can oppose only in this way. 
But even this many shrink from doing. Feeling but little 
their responsibility for immoral laws, they allow them to be 
enacted and executed without their opposition, in deed or 
word. In this they act contrary to the practice and com- 
mands of Christ. He was bold to reprove all wrong insti- 
tutions and edicts. He faithfully shed the light which He 
brought into the world upon all the habitations of cruelty. 
If we would receive His approval, we must pour the light 
of truth upon the nefarious laws and practices that yet curse 
mankind. In this way all can serve their God and create a 
moral power that shall sweep all these solidified and imperi- 
ous iniquities from the world. These fires kindled in solitary 
breasts, spreading through their nearer circles of family, 
church, and community, shall meet and enkindle other like 
fires in other hearts, and other localities, until the mighty 
flame shall blaze over all the land, and consume the evil that 
had long enjoyed supreme possession. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 15 

When, then, we are convinced of the immorality of a 
law, if we would render to God the things that are God's, 
we are oath-bound of conscience to refuse compliance with 
its demands for cooperation, to disobey its commands to 
desist from the right which it opposes, and to throw our 
influence against it, so as to destroy its energy and compel 
its repeal. 

III. Let us apply these fundamental principles to the 
subject which is so fearfully agitating' the nation. 

The law for the rendition of fugitives comes to us clothed 
in the majesty of that authority which we all feel bound to 
respect, and, if possible, to obey. Yet its form and fea- 
tures, despite this stateliness, are repugnant to our feelings 
and judgment. Caesar, though in set array and claiming 
sovereign honors, is demanding clearly not the things which 
are his own, but the things which are God's. The question 
of obligation is therefore brought home to our hearts. It 
is no theory merely that we have been discussing, no scho- 
lastic bout of words, but a present and pressing duty. We 
may feel at a loss how to proceed. We may fancy our 
sympathy for the slave is an impulse of benevolence which 
cooler decisions of the reason should restrain, while the 
duty of sustaining the authority of law is confirmed by every 
consideration of benevolence and justice, human and divine. 

Amid this contest of principles, when the pulpit and press 
are urging the decree of State as of superior claim to the 
decree of Conscience, when we are told obedience to Caesar 
fulminating- his edicts against God is a greater duty than 
obedience to God Himself, uttering his decrees in every 
heart against this law of Caesar, in such a moment of wide- 
spread and increasing conflict, we must reexamine the 
charts divinely granted us, to see if we can track the course 
marked out by the King of kings, the Caesar of Caesars, 
which alone will lead us to the desired haven. 

The ground of our opposition to all laws that protect 



16 THE HIGHER LAW. 

slavery is the feeling against slavery itself. We may pro- 
fess to give political or other reasons for this feeling, but 
we fail to see, or to acknowledge, the true reason by any 
such pretenses. It is an abhorrence to the claim of Prop- 
erty in Man that is the inspiration and the vitality of the pas- 
sion that now belts the North with a burning zone. Is this 
conviction based on immutable foundations in the moral 
nature ? or is it a transient emotion, the offspring of a per- 
verted fancy ? or is it a fanatical indulgence of a rightful 
emotion which we should curb within its appropriate limits ? 
There are many who advocate the last opinion, whose influ- 
ence greatly retards the progress of the truth. How deep 
this cause is seated may be learned from considering the 
nature of the crime which it is opposing. 

Slavery is the most extreme and , terrible violation of hu- 
man rights. Appeal to your moral instincts. . Do they not 
revolt from a state of servitude ? Would you yield up your 
liberty of thought, of speech, of act, and become the pos- 
session, body and soul, of another ? History shows the 
supreme vitality and energy of this feeling. All other 
passions and purposes of men are weak in comparison with 
this innermost nature. It is read in the insurrections 
which disturb the serenity of tyrants, in the revolutions that 
have wrought such mighty changes in society, in the 
haughty bearing of the savage, in the elastic step of the 
freeman. It impels every colony to proclaim its indepen- 
dence from its parent State when its strength is sufficient 
to sustain its desires. It is the soul of eloquence, of poetry, 
of art, of patriotism. It feeds the sacred fires of religion. 
Right over myself, a right given by God, and only to be 
annulled by Him, or for reasons which He approves, — this 
is the first law of our individual being-. 

But it is cruelly said, these emotions are not common to 
the enslaved people of America. They are beneath this 
universal sentiment of humanity, because they are beneath 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 17 

fthe grade of man. See how those who have known nothing 
of freedom save by the undying promptings of their nature 
are making efforts to obtain it, by as great courage and 
sufferings as have made illustrious the annals of the world. 

" Their pulses beat with floods of living fire." 

They hide themselves in the perilous holds of tiny coasters ; 
they put on disguises and thread fearfully the paths of travel. 
A lady, soft and delicate, wears, like Imogen, the garb of 
men, and employs as a servant her darker-favored hus- 
band, both slaves now, both unspeakably despised because 
slaves and of African blood, but both to be held in honor 
abroad and at home, and to become noted persons in the 
history of their times.* One has himself nailed in a box, 
and in this coffin-like carriage is rudely tossed hither and 
thither, as freight, after the rough mode of public carriers, 
who, had they dreamed they were handling a living man, 
and he a black slave, would have torn off the cover, not to 
relieve, deliver, and hail such unexampled endurance, but 
to reject him with loathing, as of a race that neither de- 
serves nor desires its liberty, and to hurl him hotly back 
into the hell from which they were unwittingly bearing him. 

Thus does the nature of man break through every crust, 
however thick, of oppression and degradation, and assert 
its supreme prerogative. Thus does its immutable decree 
declare the wrongfulness of that iniquity which most posi- 
tively prevents its rightful exercise. 

Not only do our instincts thus condemn slavery, but our 
conscience approves their decision. Whatever 'palliatives 
may be thrown around it, whatever texts of Scripture may 
be wrested most wickedly to its support, whatever glamour 
Church and Society may seek to throw around its horrid 
nature, it can never seduce the Conscience to its service. 

* William and Ellen Crafts. He has been employed in the Foreign 
Service of the British Government. 
2 



18 THE HIGHER LAW. 

That tears away all these masks, pierces all these pre-f 
tensions, strips off the sacerdotal and social robes, and 
shows the devil of devils in this livery of the court of 
heaven. The Conscience of the North, sometimes against 
the treachery, frequently despite the timidity, of its pro- 
fessed exemplars and teachers, has exposed it to the exe- 
cration of the world, and made all true souls shrink from 
its awful presence. 

The Providence of God vividly supports the same truth. 
Slavery was almost the first born of sin, and has settled in 
midnight blackness on every nation. No scruples existed 
as to the color or nationality of the victim. If he was the 
weaker, he became the property of the stronger. Black 
stole white, and white black. The children of Ham sold 
and scourged the children of Japhet, and those of Japhet 
unrighteously fulfilled prophecy by dwelling thus cruelly 
in the tents of Shem. 

What has caused, in the slow march of the world, its steady 
disappearance ? Why have the most advanced peoples of 
mankind outgrown this barbarism ? It is the Providence of 
God declaring its sinfulness, by the evils He inflicts on its 
disciples, — evils in the state of anarchy, of corruption, of 
poverty, of weakness, of dissolution ; evils in the individual 
transgressor of ignorance and brutality. He demanded its 
extinction as the first step in civilization. He led the 
advancing' races further and further from its black abyss, 
until now, the mere idea of property in man is as abhorrent 
to the Christian world as the eating of man, its twin abomina- 
tion in birth and dominion. 

The Word of God confirms these witnesses to this truth. 
If it does not, then must this mode of revelation be in dis- 
agreement with the other which its Author has adopted, 
which would be equivalent to saying that God approved in 
the Bible that which he condemns in the conscience, and 
in His Providence, and that He is not, therefore, ever and 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 19 

everywhere, One and the Same. No such fear need possess 
our souls. The written law of God is identical with that 
inscribed on the tables of every heart, on the annals of 
every people, on the pages of every age. Every sentiment 
of general application, every decree of eternal obligation, 
is inspired with the idea of liberty. The commands of 
Sinai are penned on every Conscience. Had they said, 
"Worship other gods and all gods beside or with Me, dis- 
obey your parents, kill, commit adultery, steal, covet, bear 
false witness against your neighbor," we should universally 
declare the Bible the worst of books, and its Author the 
worst of beings. 

Far otherwise is the truth. Its every precept is instinct 
with human liberty. Every line burns against human bond- 
age. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "If a 
man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God, whom he hath not seen ?" " Love worketh no ill 
to his neighbor." " Ye are called unto liberty." " Whom 
the Son maketh free is free indeed." "Do unto others as ye 
would that they should do to you." Every command, and 
reflection, and incident of general import is a silent or vocal 
protest against slavery. Whatever words may there be found 
seemingly recognizing this evil, were designed to mitigate a 
system that could not yet be extirpated. While the State 
with its every arm protected the sin, and raged against its 
victim, it was almost impossible to escape from its toils. Its 
meshes covered the earth, and wherever fugitives fled, they 
would be caught in the snare of a vigilant tyranny. Their 
diuVy was, therefore, ordinarily, to abide in their oppressed 
condition, enjoying spiritual liberty, and looking forward to 
the hour when death should break the chain and admit 
them to the rights and joys of the eternally free. But 
while the apostle to slaves — himself boasting, so as to g-et 
nearer their estate and thus their hearts, that he, too, was 
a slave, but of Jesus Christ, who also, he declared, had 



20 THE HIGHER LAW. 

taken upon Himself the form of a slave, — carefully ad- 
vised their patient endurance of the ills they suffered, he 
constantly showed how wicked was the state they were 
compelled to endure, how glorious was liberty in its highest 
and proportionally in its lowest forms, how proper it was 
for them to escape, if possible, from their doom, how ob- 
ligatory it was upon Christian masters to give their slaves 
that which was just and equal, which could be nothing less 
than their emancipation, and how masters, if Christian, 
must receive their own slaves no longer as slaves, but 
above slaves, even as brethren beloved in the flesh and, 
the Lord. 

The early history of the Church proves the true character 
and influence of the Bible. Christians were bound to 
emancipate their slaves, and the plate was often sold from 
the altar to deliver their brethren from this dreadful yoke. 
Within a few centuries of her beginning, and almost 
in the first of her political domination, she had cast out the 
evil not only from the Church, but from the State, that ruled 
over all the civilized earth, and had fostered this iniquity 
till Christianity assailed it, as the most precious jewel of 
the realm. 

Such is the Word, such the work, of the Bible against 
slavery. It is designed to enforce the law written in our 
hearts by the light of nature, with the clearer utterances 
of revealed will. It cannot clash with the central impulse 
of that earlier law. It is intended for the guidance of 
man in every stage of his human, perhaps of his heavenly 
career, in the full glory of the millennial age, as well as 
the full darkness of the pagan era ; and it can never approve 
a practice which the Providence of God is clearly removing' 
to make way for the full triumph of the Gospel of Christ. 

A Book of such vastness of aim and expression, bound 
indissolubly to every attribute of God, can never be per- 
verted to the service of Satan. Its frequent declarations 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 21 

in the polity of Moses ; its pathetic descriptions of the 
enslavement of Joseph, of the Hebrew people, and of the 
kingdoms of Judea and Israel ; the odes of its prophets, 
bewailing the bondage, or exulting in the salvation of 
their people ; the sublime teachings of the Savior ; the 
sympathizing advice of the apostle, — all show that the 
Word of God, from its every page, in one steady, change- 
less beam of light divine, portrays and consumes this crime 
of crimes. 

Tested, therefore, by all the means given us for discerning 
moral quality, slavery is condemned. At every tribunal to 
which it has successively appealed, it is adjudged guilty. 
Finding no protection at any court of divine decree, it 
has fled to the civil power, and is now striving to find 
under its shadow safety from the ministers of divine jus- 
tice, and liberty to pursue unmolested its nefarious career. 
Here it defies our assault, and profanely presumes to exe- 
cute vengeance, spiritual no less than civil, on all who dare 
oppose its hellish sway. 

What is our duty in respect to it ? 

If it did not directly put itself athwart our path, if it 
laid no commands on us to assist in its extension or perpe- 
tuity, if it ruled in a distant realm, and our land was 
happily free from its baleful presence, we should still be 
morally bound to raise our voices against it, to strive to 
enlighten its supporters, to relieve its victims, and to seek 
in every right way its extirpation. We acknowledge this 
duty binding in respect to every other vice. Our Missionary 
and Bible Societies attest its depth and fervor. Our sym- 
pathies for Greece, France, Hungary, and Italy, expressed 
not only by the general press and voice, but in some cases 
by the solemn resolves of the National Legislature, show 
how vain and wicked it is to suppress the feelings of 
brotherhood, and the actions by which they demand ex- 
pression. 



22 THE HIGHER LAW. 

If this be right concerning" religious and political errors 
separately, shall it be declared wrong if indulged toward 
an institution which is evil of every kind, which annihilates 
all civil rights, corrupts all moral sentiments, and dethrones 
God from His sovereignty in the soul ? If it is, then, our 
unquestionable right and most imperative duty to exert our 
influence for its abolition, if it prevailed in another country, 
does this duty diminish as the evil approaches our shores, 
and disappear as it lands upon them ? Have the ignorant 
perpetrators of this crime no claim on our superior light, 
and their intelligent supporters on our indignation ? Have 
its victims no demand on our tears and prayers ? 

But if this duty be ours when the iniquity is united with 
us by national jurisdiction, though not directly influencing 
the society in which we live, it becomes, if possible, more 
imperative when the unholy institution has seized the power 
of the government, and is using it for its basest purposes ; 
when it intrudes its hateful presence into the seats which, 
till now, were free from its sway, and seeks to make us 
abject slaves of its satanic will. Then are we compelled by 
every consideration of the present and future, of national 
honor, of our own life even, to labor for its removal. Not 
with the corrupt means which itself gladly uses for its 
diffusion, not with its own favorite weapons, the stake, 
the knife, the bloodhound, but with the more fatal though 
less speedy weapons of speech, and prayer, and vote — 
powers given us by the God of nations and of men for the 
overthrow of every stronghold which sin erects in the 
institutions of society. 

A government, therefore, which indorses slavery, which 
orders the recovery of those who have escaped from its 
dreadful dungeon, ought to be met with one general burst 
of execration, one united prayer and effort for the repeal 
of its wicked enactment, and the deliverance of those so 
unrighteously bound. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 23 

If this duty is not embraced by all, it is none the less 
binding upon us. Our individual action should have this 
tendency. Our prayer, our voice, our oath, our effort, 
should be devoted to the destruction of this engine of 
oppression, and the driving back of its director and inspirer 
to his native hell. 

More than this we may not be able to do. The foot of 
the fugitive and his pursuer may not pass our door. But 
if occasion should occur which should bring us into imme- 
diate contact with it, by present or future laws, (for we 
know not what edicts may yet issue from this perverted 
seat of power,) other duties will arise, severe, authorita- 
tive, unavoidable. What do they demand ? 

We have shown that when any human law is opposed 
to the evident decisions of divine law, those edicts are 
to be disobeyed both in what they command us to do, and 
in what they command us to refrain from doing. To give 
us a right to act in this manner, the law must be clearly 
immoral. Laws requiring obedience to any peculiar system 
of government are not of this class, as no form of govern- 
ment, as such, can be proved to be hostile to the divine 
will. But an act designed to defend a system abhorrent 
to every virtuous faculty of our nature, stamped with in- 
famy by the hand of God in the ruin of the countries and 
nations which cherish it, opposed by the Conscience of 
every man, and the Spirit of God, — such a system finds 
no defense for its demands in any laws it may impudently 
set up. With God as our Guide and Inspirer, we should 
not hesitate to advance in the way that He marks out 
against such a stronghold of Satan. 

Should we be called upon to assist in the execution of 
this law, we must refuse. Ready as we should be to aid 
the executors of laws which we have no sound reasons to 
consider morally wrong, we should refuse any assistance in 
the execution of those clearly criminal. We must suffer, if 



24 THE HIGHER LAW. 

need be, the penalty of disobedience, rejoicing that we are 
counted worthy to endure such contradiction of sinners, 
and that Christ gives us strength sufficient for the high 
resolve. 

If the minions of government should not attempt to 
execute upon us its penalties, it will not be from want of 
willingness on their part to engage in such work, nor from 
the benevolence of the State which approves such decrees. 
Those who are ready to execute a cruel law on an un- 
offending woman — as the slave-catchers of the Xorth are, 
and will be — will delight to wreak their vengeance upon 
those who dare to decline cooperation. Malice always 
burns the fiercest against those who, like the Hebrew cap- 
tives, refuse to follow their fellows into known sin at the 
orders of popular power. This is already seen in the dia- 
bolic hate with which disgrace and suffering are heaped 
upon those who have allowed their philanthropic feelings 
to cause them to assist in the escape of fugitives. Some 
of these disciples of Christ have died under their cruel 
mockings, bonds, and imprisonment ; others have, till lately, 
pined away in solitude and misery, within the walls of the 
national jail ; and still others are to-day toiling under the 
lash in a Kentucky prison-house. A like fate would befall 
us even in this section, boastful of its liberty of speech, 
were we few and weak. But, by the grace of God, the 
fangs of this serpent have here been drawn. It has lost 
much of its deadly venom, and slight is the liability of 
injury from obeying this command of our Conscience. 

Yet it may be inflicted. We may be in those sections 
where the opposing influence reigns, and where any resist- 
ance, even so mild as declining to cooperate in the bloody 
work of reenslaving a free man, may meet with instant 
vengeance. There and then should vre commit our ways 
unto the Lord, and meet our appointed fate in Christian 
heroism, in Christian hope. Never should our hands be 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 25 

stained by more than the blood of the oppressed — the free- 
dom of which that grasp may deprive him. Never should 
our ear feel the everlasting burning of that cry of despair 
which bursts from the captured fugitive as our clutch fas- 
tens upon his body and his soul. Never should our hearts 
be rived with the consciousness that we have been acces- 
sory to the reburial alive of one who had raised himself, 
with the invisible help of the Divine Rescuer, from that 
grave of living death. Far better that the arm wither, 
and the ear cease forever to catch any sound of thought 
or joy, than that such memories should curse our future 
hours. 

But we have another duty forced upon us by the State, 
which compels us to defy the State. We are forbidden to 
harbor the fugitive, or to assist him in his endeavors to 
escape his pursuer. This command conflicts with the posi- 
tive decree of God none the less than those which demand 
our aid in catching and binding the unhappy victim. It 
must be disregarded. If the man seeks our assistance 
whom the government is seeking to reduce to the awful 
bondage, from which, against great odds and amid great 
perils, he has effected his escape, even though it forbids us 
to oppose its vile attempt, as servants of Christ we should 
unhesitatingly disobey it, and obey Him. We must receive 
him to our fireside as cordially as we would receive our 
Lord, had He sought the shelter of our roof from the wicked 
rage of His persecutors. We must conceal him from his 
pursuers. We must aid him to escape from his native land, 
that is thus refusing the protection to its native-born citizens 
under its own flag, and on its own soil, which it claims for 
those who but partially adopt it as their own, and are under 
the flag beneath which they were born, sacrificing these 
primal and dearest rights of its people to the lusts of god- 
less traffickers in human flesh. 

This duty may be attended with greater peril to our 



26 THE HIGHER LAW. 

property and liberty than the refusal to assist in his recap- 
ture ; but whatever sacrifices attend such a course, we 
should willingly make them, feeling that the release of our 
brethren from perpetual slavery is far more than a temporary 
loss of our own liberty, or the sacrifice of all our property. 
It is a duty we owe to him as our brother, of our own flesh 
and blood, made in the same image as ourselves, by the same 
God, endowed with the same nature and rights, responsible 
to the same justice, and heir of the same immortality. 

We cannot shun this command of God and be guiltless 
concerning our brother. "We cannot obey the law of the 
land and have a conscience void of offense toward God and 
toward man. We have let the sufferer be stretched again 
upon the rack, from which, torn and weary, he has broken 
away. We have permitted him who had escaped from this 
most horrible pit, to be again plunged into its abyss of 
despair. We have shut our eyes, to his outstretched arms 
and imploring appeal. We have withheld our hand from 
the guidance and support he entreated. How, then, can we 
meet His eye, His voice, His frown, when He shall say, 
" Forasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these My 
brethren, ye did it not unto Me. Depart from Me, ye that 
work iniquity." Not doing our duty when it is thus made 
a proof of our love for Christ, is doing iniquity. Beware 
how this sin lieth at your door. 

Thus clearly does the will and Word of God mark out our 
path in the solemn trials of the hour. 

IV. But a plea is set up by some teachers, political 
and religious, with much vociferation and pertinacity, that 
attracts attention, bewilders the- judgment, and therefore 
merits consideration. 

It is said, that although, under some circumstances, the 
course here laid down may be our duty, yet, as we are 
situated, under a Constitution that, it is declared, recognizes 
this system, as a national institution, we are morally bound 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 27 

to obey the laws based on this recognition, even if they 
clash with the laws of our Creator. 

We have shown that civil government is based on the 
social faculty, an inferior propensity of our nature, which 
cannot rightly control the faculties acknowledged to be 
superior. If this be so, any peculiarities in the institutions 
of that government, whether in its Constitution, or laws, or 
their operation, are inferior in their very nature to the duties 
arising from our higher being, and can rightfully secure the 
weight of its approval, only by conforming to its character 
and claims. 

The Constitution is a peculiarity of our national govern- 
ment, designed to effect the union of many independent 
governments under one head for certain specific and limited 
purposes. It is not generally considered as minute in its 
authority as an ordinary government, since it only exercises 
its power within specified limits. If it is thus limited, the 
obligations to obe}' its claims can only be coextensive with 
its written powers to make these claims. Where is the 
written authority for this demand ? "Where does the Con- 
stitution say, •'■' Congress has power to compel the restora- 
tion of a runaway slave, even to the infliction of penalties 
upon those who aid in his escape, or refuse to aid in his 
return ? ' ; Is it so nominated in the bond ? Ere we give up 
the pound of flesh, cut from the centre of the heart, bleeding 
with the dying life of a murdered Conscience, we demand 
the letter of the sinful law. According to the favorite argu- 
ment of the slaveholder, on his most petted theory of State 
rights, he is powerless to enact or execute this great crime 
against humanity and God. No step can he go beyond the 
expressed permissions of the Constitution. He is hoisted 
with his own petard. 

But if it be allowed, with other statesmen, that the Con- 
stitution is of equal authority with the States, or even 
supreme in its claims, it cannot trample on the rights which 



28 THE HIGHER LAW. 

itself guarantees, nor can it justly command the violation of 
that higher law under which its own existence alone 
endures. If the clause on which the law is based can, or 
ought to be construed to support slavery, then that clause 
conflicts with the preamble of the Constitution, and hence 
can only be of superior weight on condition that it more 
closely conforms to the law of God. If we must choose 
between them, we must choose that which agrees best with 
the law written on our hearts. The preamble decrees liberty, 
the parenthesis of an article only suggests slavery. Under 
which king ? God and man actually come together in one 
part of the Constitution, man and the devil are, perhaps, 
united in another. Who is to be worshiped ? 

Many other legal objections are made to the binding 
efficiency of this clause. It contains no power to execute 
itself, says one, and therefore must be left to the moral sense 
of the States themselves. It was not designed, says 
another, and no less an authority than Daniel Webster, to 
support slavery, but only the system of apprenticeship, then 
very popular. Thus diversity of opinion among leading and 
legal minds teaches us to be cautious about placing the 
instrument, and the laws which may be said to be founded 
upon it, above the intuitions of our moral nature, and the 
teachings of the Word of God. We should ever remember 
that there is a Law above the Constitution, a Lawgiver more 
exalted than Congress, obedience to whose will alone can 
make a people virtuous, prosperous, and happy. 

It has become too much the fashion of late to center all 
moral excellence and natural prosperity in the Constitution. 
We acknowledge with gratitude the debt we owe our fathers, 
and the value of the bond which unites our great country. 
We believe that through these ties the Maker and Redeemer 
of the race will display His attributes more clearly to mankind 
than lias yet been seen. We believe that here the religion 
of Christ is to have full course and be glorified. But while 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 29 

such are our opinions and desires, we believe that this 
result can be consummated only by bringing' the souls of 
men into subjection to Christ through their vital regenera- 
tion in the principles of the gospel. Shut up the Bible 
House, the Tract Depository, the Church ; break the presses, 
whose frequent issues, like sacred doves, fly over all the 
land ; put out the light of Christianity in its renewing power 
upon some, its restraining power over all ; and this land would 
soon present a spectacle to the eyes of men and of angels 
more hideous than any that glares upon us from the worst 
epochs of human history, — full of activity, of enterprise, of 
intelligence, of ambition, of culture, but without God, with- 
out restraint of law or love, a vast menagerie of untamed, 
cruel, and insatiable lusts, without bar, or bolt, or keeper, 
— a tropical luxuriance of civilization, full of more than 
tropical beasts of passion and destruction. The Constitu- 
tion would be trampled under foot by all, as it now is 
in those States whose devotion to slavery brings them into 
collision with its claims, and a greater than antediluvian 
corruption would cry mightily to God for a greater than 
antediluvian ruin. 

In Christ, not in the Constitution, must we put our trust. 
On His law should we meditate, not on that which again 
nails Him, scourged and bleeding, to the fatal cross. His 
Name should be our badge of honor, our stamp of manhood. 
Then, and then only, shall we truly render not only unto 
Cassar the things that are Ceesar's, but unto God, also, the 
things that are God's. 

I have endeavored to explain the grounds of our relation 
to civil government, the extent of the obligation it imposes, 
the modes of determining its usurpation of rights not belong- 
ing to it, and our duty when it assumes these unbestowed 
prerogatives for unrighteous ends. 

I entreat you, as you love the Lord your God, as you 
love your neighbor, as you desire the approval of a good 



30 THE HIGHEK LAW. 

Conscience now, and the approving welcome of Christ the 
Judge in that day, I entreat you, declare your hostility to 
any system or edict that retards the progress of the Gospel, 
violates the teachings of the Conscience, defrauds your 
neighbor of rights as truly his as they are yours, and as 
far above all price for himself, his wife, his children, as 
they are to you and yours, and that crowns its height of 
iniquity by blasphemously rejecting the laws most expres- 
sive of infinite love and holiness, the foundations of the 
universe and of God Himself. 

Let these expiring struggles of one of the most fell de- 
stroyers of human happiness meet with no sympathy from 
you. Let not the eye melt with pity over its narrative of 
injuries inflicted by a just God and people. Let not the 
hand of. charity relieve its most deserved distress. It 
assumes these postures of petition from the weakness that 
precedes dissolution. There would be no need of a Fugi- 
tive Slave Act, had not the conscience of the North given 
these poor victims a home at every Christian hearth-stone, 
were not the hideous crime of slavery staggering in its 
strongholds under the light and strength which Christ and 
the hour are sending forth upon it mightily. 

Be not deceived by its new assumption of national forms 
and phrases, the robes of Congressional decree and presiden- 
tial signature. How will that signature yet glare upon its 
signer, as Faust's in the legend. It will stain his memory to 
all generations. Give it no support in any form. It is the 
same fiend that crucified the Master. It is ready to feast its 
ravenous appetite upon the bodies and souls of your brethren. 
If by your silence or connivance it regains its strength, it will 
only use it for the transformation of the whole country into 
one vast grave of liberty and law. It has been driven from 
the firesides, the capitols, the churches of the North. It 
has thrown off the cloak of hypocritical philanthropy and 
piety, of Biblical approval, of pecuniary profit, of social 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 31 

advantage, in which, till most recently, it strove to make 
itself divine. It has fled for shelter to the Constitution, 
hoping to find under its folds protection and opportunity to 
regain its lost dominion. 

Be not deceived. If allowed to coil itself around that 
symbol of national unity, it will not relax its hold until it 
has pressed all vitality not only from the American Con- 
stitution, but from the American people. If permitted to 
cling to that altar of our national faith, it will defile the 
whole temple of our liberties with its pestiferous breath. 
Like Laocoon's will be our condition, like Laocoon's our 
fate. 

There is no permanent union between liberty and slavery. 
God and Satan can have no compact nor compromise. One 
or the other must be triumphant. If you wish for the cause 
of God to prevail, you must enroll yourself among the active 
opponents of every institution and effort designed to sup- 
port or extend the cause of sin, and labor earnestly and 
persistently for the righteous victory. 

Let your tears flow for the oppressed rather than for the 
oppressor, for those by this wicked decree made unjustly law- 
less, rather than for those impiously lawful. Think upon the 
long, long hours which the poor slave spends in pining for 
freedom ; think of the perils and sufferings he undergoes in 
making his escape from the house of bondage. Remember 
his outcast and despised condition even among the free, 
and, in some respects, Christian States to which he has fled. 
Dwell upon the struggles, fears, toils, sufferings, loathings 
which he has endured, and then say, if you be a Christian, 
if you be a man, if a human soul beats in your bosom, can 
you place the manacles again upon those bleeding hands ? 
Can you allow him, through your vigilance in assisting in 
his arrest, or your negligence in affording him the means of 
escape, to be dragged back in chains to the lash, the block, 
the more than death, from which God and his strong will 



32 THE HIGHER LAW. 

have rescued him ? Can you refuse to contribute your 
voice and vote, your purse and prayers, every means in 
your possession, or your influence, to remove this curse 
from the Church and the land ? Lift your hearts above the 
thick air of cowardice and crime that to-day invests this 
whole nation, into the serene, eternal da}^ of the truth of 
God. Say to every one who solicits your aid in this work 
of immeasurable crime, in the mighty words of Freedom's 
Laureate : — 

" We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell? ■*> 

Our voices at your bidding take up the bloodhounds' yell? 
We gather at your summons above our fathers' grave, 
Erom Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear the wretched slave ? 

" Thank God, not yet so vilely can Christian freemen bow; 
The spirit of our early times is with us even now. 
Think not because our Pilgrim blood flows slow, and calm, and cool, 
We thus can stoop our chainless neck, our brother's slave and tool. 

"All that a brother should do, all that a free man may, 
Heart, hand, and purse Ave oifer as in that early day ; 
But that one dark, loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, 
And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown. 

" Hold while ye may your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air 
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's stern despair. 
Cling closer to the cleaving curse that writes upon your plains 
The burden of the Almighty's wrath against a land of chains. 

" We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within 
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin ; 
We leave you with your bondmen to wrestle, while ye can, 
With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man. 

" But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given 
For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven ; 
No slave hunt in our borders, no pirates on our strand, 
No fetters for our brethren, no slave upon our land." 




THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 



"The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places." — 

2 Samuel i. 19. 
"And Saul was consenting- unto his death." — Acts viii. 1. 
"There was darkness over all the land." — Matt, xxviii. 45. 

|E gather to-day around the corpse of Freedom. 
Our nation has given up the ghost. Her deadly 
/| sickness has met with but feeble resistance to its 
progress ; and to-day it waves its black banner in 
acknowledged triumph over her prostrate, corrupting form. 
The beauty of Israel is slain upon her high places. As we 
bend over this fallen glory and strength, I shall try to speak 
of that vanished strength and glory, of the means and the 
foe that murdered it : — 

" Show you sweet" Freedom's " wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths! 
And bid them speak for me." 

I ask you to consider your duty as Christians in this 
dreadful hour, and to see with the eye of prophecy either 
her resurrection in a greatness never before displayed, 
like that of her Divine Author on His reappearance from 

* A sermon preached at Wilbraham, Mass., May 28, 1854, on the oc- 
casion of the passage of the Nebraska Bill, by the Senate of the United 
States, on the midnight of Thursday, May 25, 1854. 

3 (33) . 



34 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

the grave — a resurrection that shall send despair and ruin 
through the ranks of her murderers, or, if we are perma- 
nently stupefied by the dragon that has triumphed over us, 
behold with the same clear vision the still more fearful 
spectacle of a contending, ruined, obliterated nation. 

" A curse shall light upon the limbs of men, 
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
Will cumber all the parts of this fair land." 

You may say "This is a sick man's dream." " I& not 
this a free land ? Has it not been consecrated by the pray- 
ers and sacred sufferings of the Pilgrims, honored by the 
patriotic valor of the revolutionary fathers, made illustrious 
by the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson, of Hamilton 
and Adams ? Is it not a land whose institutions are based 
on the broadest principles of liberty — a land of wealth and 
enterprise, comfort and culture, churches and piety ? And 
can this land be wrapped in its grave clothes, and be even 
now an offense and a loathing among the nations of the 
earth? Impossible! Does not trade rush through its 
crowded channels ? Does not the earth bring forth abun- 
dantly, laughing ever with its munificent harvests ? Does 
not labor ' strike with its hundred hands at the golden gates 
of the morning ' ? Does not steam toil in our factories, and 
whirl its products over all the land ? Do not sweet bells 
call to church ? Are we not the greatest, freest, happiest 
of nations?" Alas! " Gray hairs were on him, and he 
knew it not." " When ye say peace and safety, then sud- 
den destruction cometh upon him, and he cannot escape." 
Material life flows on after the spiritual has gone. Chemical 
laws keep the atoms of a dead body for a while as compact 
as when it tented a soul. 

There is no national life. What exists, exists in obstruc- 
tion, weakness, obscurity. Last Thursday we surrendered 
all our glorious heritage. We gave up the Declaration of 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 35 

Independence, the revolutionary speeches, and battles of 
fire and blood, the Constitution of our country, the names 
of our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestry, our hopes and pros- 
pects, our morals and religion. We have laid them all at 
the feet of Slavery. We confess ourselves her slaves. We 
open our gates for her triumphal march to unquestioned, 
universal power. 

I ask no pardon for bringing this subject before you on 
this sacred day. I have waited till the strife raging at the 
seat of government should end, feeling that I had no need 
to stimulate you to your duty to pray for those there and 
then engaged in the contest, and that this word should be 
spoken when that battle was decided. I had hoped against 
hope that the right would triumph, and that I could have 
congratulated you on the first national step that liberty had 
taken towards a final victory. But that day is not yet, if 
ever. A far different task awaits me, and by God's grace 
I hope to discharge it. Let us, with sackcloth and ashes 
upon our souls, sit around this corpse of American Freedom ; 
deliver its funeral sermon, and gather, if we can, some rea- 
sons for its resurrection, and of our part and lot in bringing 
about the glory of that distant hour. Let us try to an- 
swer the question, How can these things be? 

Five years ago, or fifty, — any previous year since we 
became a nation, — such a deed could not have happened. 
Southerner and Northerner would have responded in burn- 
ing indignation to a charge of his devotion to such a crime, 
" Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ? Does 
not my belief that slavery is an evil, my sensitiveness to 
the honor of the country through its pledge faithfully made 
in the compromise agreement of 1820, show the injustice of 
your imputations ? " And yet this act is a necessary 
result of all previous acts. It is the perfect fruit of germs 
long since planted, and constantly nurtured. It is a link 
in an iron chain of our whole national history. In the 



36 THE DEATH OE FREEDOM. 

first concession made to the slave power, this monster was 
born. 

Though the letter of the Constitution does not use the 
word " slave/' yet in its representative basis, if not in its 
fugitive clause, there is a recognition of its existence, a 
bowing to its behests. Two small States, by their firmness 
and vehemence, brought the other eleven to their feet, made 
them surrender their convictions, and obey the soft voice, 
but mailed arm, of Belial. What though Franklin and Jay 
organize abolition societies, and "Washington and Jefferson 
favor emancipation, and Madison gets the word " slavery " 
excluded from the Constitution ? What though every emi- 
nent man of the age is hostile to the iniquity ? Still they 
let it find entrance into their Constitution. It is there, in- 
trenched in the national fortress ; it mocks at all objections 
and objectors, and commences its march to universal dominion. 

When the sons of God came together for their sublime 
deliberations, Satan came also ; and though, as in the days 
of Job, he gained not every point, yet, more than with him, 
he gained the chief, and, with the gleefulness of perdition, he 
snatched at his success, and plotted and waited, waited and 
plotted, year and year, for larger prizes. He won them. 

A law to execute more perfectly the Fugitive Slave clause 
followed within six } T ears. A law which never could have 
passed the First Congress passed the Third. A law which 
would have been pronounced unconstitutional by the found- 
ers of the Constitution triumphed under the very eyes of 
those founders. And the hand of Washington signed his 
name as president to an edict which five years before he 
would have abhorred himself for approving. 

New territory is sought. Louisiana is purchased. She 
seeks erection into States. The strife commences afresh. 
Again the slave power gains all it wants by asking for 
more ; and Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas wheel into line 
under its pirate flag, while the desert lands, which will 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 37 

not be needed for a generation, are professedly abandoned 
to freedom, then, as of old, driven into the wilderness ; 
thence, also as of old, to be driven out when its enemy 
would make this desert his dwerling-plaee. In that contro- 
versy slavery triumphed. Many then saw that when those 
remoter regions became the seat of population, it would 
claim them as its own, would make them its own. But 
then it could not have been done. The spirit of the fathers 
was not yet utterly lost. One half only of the fair acres 
was given up to this ravenous beast. One half alone of 
its pure soil was to be wet with the blood of God's perse- 
cuted saints. One half of its air was to be filled with 
shrieks under the scourge, with moans over sold and stolen 
children, with the unutterable agony of that prison-house 
of humanity. The anaconda rested content with its gorged 
appetite, which two hundred thousand square miles had 
momentarily satisfied, assured that those who had granted 
him so much would bestow the balance when his appetite 
returned. His assurance was well grounded. 

But before that hour came, the old religious and philan- 
thropic anti-slavery sentiment, which had glowed in the 
souls that burned with the revolutionary fires, was kindled 
afresh. A little, despised sect, their name a stench in the 
nostrils of the country and the Church, cast out of men as 
evil, lifted up their voice like a trumpet, and told the house 
of Israel its transgressions, and the house of J.udah its sins. 
They started from the only Christian, the only true basis — 
sympathy with the slave as a son of man and a son of 
God, an heir of heaven, a joint heir with Jesus Christ. 
This was new doctrine to our degenerate fears — a doc- 
trine no Church in this land had ever fully and faithfully 
preached. We mocked at and reviled them. We drove 
them from our churches, halls, and homes. We haled them 
before our judgment-seats. We issued edicts against them 
from State and National Congresses, and executive speeches 



38 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

from the chairs of governors and presidents. What the Mad- 
isons and Jefifersons, the Hancocks and Storys, would have 
approved was denounced and proscribed by the Van Burens 
and Everetts of this generation. 

Still they fought for the right. It may be with lack of 
discretion, yet how shall you and I in our idleness dare to 
take up a railing accusation again st them ? How dare you 
say that William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, Orange 
Scott, and their compeers were not the wisest of their 
generation in action, as they certainly were in their fears, 
their prophecies, and their entreaties ? Their errors will 
yet be lost in the splendor of their daring, sincerity, 
and zeal. If ever freedom becomes the possession, as it is 
the birthright, of every man in this land, he who will be 
honored with the loftiest monument — a monument built by 
every hand that has been raised against him — will be that 
yet hated and proscribed, that somewhat error-led, but far 
more truth-led, man, William Lloyd Garrison. 

This stone, cut out of the mountain without hands, rolled 
by few but tireless arms, grew, and grew, until, when the 
slave power set up its claim to national domain, a new 
voice mingled in the tumults of the hour, and made its 
triumphs Bunker Hill victories, that betokened an ultimate 
destruction. 

Again the anaconda stirs. It demands Texas — Texas 
with a war ; and it wins. It claims that the new regions 
acquired b}^ war should be his, and they are given it. 
Maddened with lust and success, it says, "Return to me 
my fugitives hiding in your own Free States : give me 
that nurse and playmate of your children ; that industrious 
citizen whose famity looks up to him for protection ; the 
minister from the altar. They are mine-." And all the 
people hasten to give them up. No, not all. Among 
the faithless, faithful stood, a few. Seven thousand were 
found who bent not the knee to this Baal of America. 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 39 

May they soon become seventy times seven, and deliver 
the land from this idolatry and the Jezreel abominations 
which so fiercely flourish under its dominion. 

Even then the proposition that has just been success- 
fully carried would have been rejected with abhorrence. 
Great and little politicians declared that these concessions 
were made only because the Constitution demanded it. 
Their sacrifice was Jephtha's, but so was their necessity, 
and their lamentation. But any attempt to remove an 
ancient landmark, any disturbance of ancient settlements, 
will never be allowed. No concessions to slavery. 0, no ! 
Only a painful fulfillment of agreements which our fathers 
made, only a declining to exasperate our brethren of the 
South by a useless proviso ; and so, by soft words and a 
flattering tongue, by a heart that deceived itself, the gov- 
ernment became the bloodhound of the slaveholder, to 
track and catch his God-like property. So our vast pos- 
sessions, acquired by our blood and treasure, became an 
Aceldama, a field of blood unto this day. And great men 
and good men shouted loud hosannas over these peaceful 
measures, and declared that He who holdeth the winds in 
His fists would bind these contending breezes, and that 
there should be a great calm. 

Ah ! the anaconda was only resting from his bloody 
feasts. Now and then he opes his ponderous jaws, and 
swallows down, as a sweet morsel, the body and the 
soul of a Long, or a Sims, some poor Christian free man 
or free woman. But its fell hunger does not yet gnaw 
within. And we only said, "It is the price of the Union, 
this precious Union. It is the condition of our country's 
existence. Throw the slave Daniel into the Southern den 
of lions. Our farms, our stores, our schools, must flourish 
even if a few negroes suffer slightly. They are half 
brutes. They cannot feel the chains, the whip, the auction- 
block, the breaking of heart-strings, the fiery stake of 



40 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

death. What are they compared with our great and 
glorious Union ? ' Off with their heads ! ' And on we 
marched, and boasted, and declared ourselves the stan- 
dard-bearers of the race, and called on Europe to witness 
our glory, to fall at our feet, and follow our illustrious 
leadership to universal democracy. But that great serpent 
awoke ; nay, rather, he never slept. He bided his time ; 
and when our boasts were loudest, and political calm the 
deepest, he said, " Give up that useless Missouri Compro- 
mise. It aggravates the South. It does you no good. 
It will make no difference in the end. Slavery can never 
nourish in those territories. Don't wound our feelings by 
adhering to its punctilios. You very generously aban- 
doned the Wilmot Proviso, because of our sensitiveness. 
Do the generous thing once more." 

We were struck aghast. " 'Give up the Compromise ' ? 
Open the gates of the Eden of the continent to this river 
of death, that has burned and blackened so many fair 
fields ? Never ! The Thirteen States fought eight years 
rather than submit to foreign tyranny. We will fight as 
long rather than surrender a domain twice as large as 
the Colonies embraced to a domestic tyranny immeasur- 
ably worse." Loud rose the cry : "It is ours. It shall 
remain ours." And behold, while we cry, our representa- 
tives hold it out to the greedy clutch of the slaveholder. 
It is grasped. It is swallowed, and to-day the arch 
tempter is the sole ruler in that Paradise. Freedom, 
intelligence, and enterprise, art, civilization, and Chris- 
tianity, every grace and strength of humanity, have fled, 
as the angels that frequented the holy Eden, and Satan, 
sin, and death revel in its desecrated forests and prairies, 
their unquestioned possession. 

Thus these things are. Not by one step, nor two,, have 
we reached this goal, but by a practical imbruting of the 
conscience, by yielding to the demands of this awful 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 41 

iniquity, by violently opposing and abusing its earnest 
enemies. Had not these members of Congress fought 
against the anti-slavery movement with furious passion, 
they would not be found to-day enacting this bill. The 
light that was in them is darkness ; and how great is that 
darkness ! What an awful depth upon depth of dark- 
ness ! Great men in the pulpit and the forum set the bad 
example of mocking at the higher law, and now their 
bayers on deride the very law which they so idolatrously 
worship. So comes Pandemonium, no law, but Chaos and 
old Night. 

" Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine ; 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine ! 
Lo, thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored; 
Light dies before thy uncreating word : 
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
And universal darkness buries all." 

Verily as we have sown, so do we reap this day. Saul 
is consenting to the martyr of this first-born of Christianity. 
Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, we, who tithe mint and 
anise and cummin, and neglect the weightier matters 
of the law, judgment and mercy and truth, we stand 
by while the murderous rocks are being hurled at its 
head; we share in the robber's spoils — its sacred lands, 
with all their hidden but real wealth of happiness and 
prosperity. You and I, my brethren, have too much to do 
with this dire act. Have you not said, " Party first, lib- 
erty afterward " ? Have you not cried, " Union, Union, 
Union, now and forever," carefully omitting the word 
"Liberty," which alone makes that Union an honor or a 
blessing ? Have you not filled your ears with the shouts, 
" Our Nation, however bounded, and however ruled," so 
that you could not and would not hear the wail of your 
oppressed fellow-citizens, that heart-broken entreaty from 
the depths of that vast dungeon, covering a half million 



42 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

of square miles — " Am I not a man and a brother?" 
Have you not said, " The slave belongs to his master; 
how can I interfere ? " Have you not acknowledged the 
right of man to say to his brother, his sister, " Thou 
art my property, to be woiked, whipped, starved, sold, 
ravished, killed, as I will ? " Have you not forgotten 
often in your daily prayers to pray for those in bonds as 
bound with them ? In insolence of heart have you not 
despised " God's image cut in ebony ; " ay, cut in ivory 
too, if that seems to you the more precious ? for the blue- 
eyed, yellow-haired Saxon, no less than his swarthier 
brother, groans to-day in that prison-house. Have you 
not joined in jeers and slanders against the abolitionists, 
and given ground for the remark of a senator from Georgia, 
Mr. Toombs, but last Thursday, that "the government has 
but little to fear from the abolitionists. Their greatest 
achievements have been to raise mobs of fugitives and 
free negroes, and to incite them to murder and other 
crimes, and their exploits generally end in subornation of 
perjury, to escape the criminal courts. The whole concern 
is not worth an ounce of powder." 

Have you not apologized for, defended, and even ap- 
plauded the system of slavery, commending the graces 
of the masters, the submission, contentment, and even 
happiness of the slave ? Have you not cherished a pride 
of caste, declared complexion a Heaven-appointed barrier 
of separation between the children of Adam, a great gulf, 
across which no white and wealthy Dives could pass to 
mingle in perfect unity of feeling and life with a black 
or tawny Lazarus, barbarous, beggarly, and sore-smitten, 
as you saw and said, albeit he was even then lying in 
Abraham's bosom, the best beloved of all his children ? 
Have you not thus declared the diversity of the human 
race, and given your sinful aversion the authority of a 
divine decree ? 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 43 

Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone 
at those lofty in position and power, who but give the 
logical and inevitable conclusion to these feelings ; who 
say, "The negro has no identity of rights with the white.."' 
as you say he has none of blood ; " the abolitionist is a 
madman, scattering firebrands, arrows, and death. Money 
is everything". Make money. Extend slavery. Crush out 
abolitionism ! " And it is done. In their grand if gloomy 
palace of hell sit these slave masters of the people, all of 
whom are their slaves, and most of whom, if of white 
faces, hug their chains and kiss their conquerors' feet. 
They exult, as did the Pandemonium chiefs over their mag- 
nificent structure. They exclaim with the Babylonian mon- 
arch, " Is not this great Babylon that I have builded ? " 
" Surely all the principalities and powers, all the offices and 
honor of the American continent, shall be ours, and ours 
forever." They heed not the footstep of the descending 
God ; they hear not that avenging voice whispering in their 
heart of hearts, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be 
required of thee ; " then what becomes of thy stores of 
power, pomp, and pride ? 

" An answer sweeps through the troubled night 
"With a shout for the slave and a shout for the right. 
Hear ye not, hear ye not. through your marble arch, 
The iron tramp of the millions march ? 
The earthquake awakes in a giant start, 
And breaks the chain which has bound his heart." 

By such slow and steady approaches the citadel of liber- 
ty has been enclosed, undermined, taken. America is no 
longer a free nation. Xo longer can she boast that in 
her borders the rights of man are inviolable. Here may 
the oppressed find liberty, and the heavy laden rest. Xot 
in obedience to constitutional scruples, not by a sudden 
surprise, temptation, or fall, has this destruction come upon 
her. This act is against all constitutional statements or 



44 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM: 

suggestions. She gives her hand, if not her heart, to the 
vote. So far from being the first triumph of the Tempter, 
it is the autumnal fruit of seeds sown by our fathers' hands, 
and nurtured and enriched by the assiduous culture of 
three generations. From the ordinance of 1781, which 
admitted slavery to all our country south of the Ohio, by 
forbidding it north of that line, and which built up the 
enormous power of this crime in four of the larg-est and 
most influential of our Slave States, — Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Alabama, and Mississippi, — we have descended to the ordi- 
nance of 1854, which prohibits freedom in all the territory 
that had been pledged sacredly to liberty, which practically 
and intentionally forbids any restrictions on the march of 
this demon over any part of the national domain. 

There is no national life in us. Before the world, before 
God, we stand to-day in a blacker infamy than rests upon 
any other power. We have become the basest of king- 
doms. The lowest of the nations of the earth look down 
upon us. France has liberated its slaves in Algiers and 
the West Indies. Russia has emancipated its serfs, Mexico 
its citizens. Brazil discourages slavery and encourages 
its extirpation. Turkey represses this accursed trade. 
We alone, of all Christian, of all heathen lands, avow the 
divine origin of slavery, and accord it unlimited life. We 
alone tear down the wall of separation our fathers had 
built, and say to the sea of unspeakable crime and agony, 
" No longer shall it be said to thee, by man or God, ' Here 
shall thy proud waves be stayed ; ' but dash, roar, roll 
onward and onward, engulfing all those vast and blessed 
regions with an arkless deluge of death." 

If Jefferson could say, in his day, "I tremble for my 
country when I remember that God is just," what must we 
say, who have seen that country descend from one point of 
baseness to another, until now African cruelty, Egyptian 
degradation, or Roman corruption, in the heights of their 



THE NEBRASKA BILE. 45 

excesses, were hardly more vile, were far less guilty? There 
should be no more Fourth of July, — its celebration is a 
mockery ; no more reading of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, — we are independent no longer: the slave's collar 
and manacles burden our neck and arms ; no more boast of 
our Christianity as a nation, when our President and Con- 
gress exceed Xero and his senate in pagan edicts and 
crimes ; no more vaunts of our greatness among the nations 
of the earth. They have heard of our shame, they have 
seen it, and they rejoice in it. We, raised to heaven by 
free institutions and all the culture that has ever yet been 
given to man, have voluntarily cast ourselves down to hell. 
Before God and all the world, America stands to-day the 
propagandist of slavery, the advocate and practicer of the 
dogma that man can, and should, and shall own his fellow- 
man ; that we are endowed by the Creator, not with inalien- 
able rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
but of murder, bondage, and the destruction of happiness ; 
that there is no sacredness in the marriage tie, no duty to 
believe in or regard the affections of father or mother, hus- 
band or wife, brother or sister; that the " peculiar'' and 
very domestic " institution " of home life and love is con- 
fined exclusively to those who have not a drop of African 
blood in their veins ; that the human auction-block, the 
whipping-post, the branding-iron, the bloodhound, the gal- 
lows-tree, and the stake — in a word, every barbarism — 
are the true elements of a nation's growth and glory. 
These are the doctrines enacted by the present Congress of 
the United States, approved by our present President, and 
published to the world as the consummate flower of Chris- 
tian civilization in this land of the Puritan, Huguenot, and 
Quaker, in the year of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 
the eighteen hundred and fifty-fourth. The pen that put 
the figures of that date of our redemption upon this satanic 
bill must have shrunk from the profanity, if the heart and 



46 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

hand that it served were so depraved as to be unconscious 
of the horrible sin. 

The deepest depth is reached. There may be a table- 
land of darkness upon which future legislators and execu- 
tives shall erect other trophies of their wickedness, — the 
abolition of all laws which now prevent the bringing- or 
keeping and trading of slaves in the Free States ; the rein- 
statement of the African slave trade — a trade far less cruel 
than that which is regularly carried on under the protection 
of our government between Baltimore and New Orleans ; 
the enslaving of white laborers as well as those of the darker 
hue, who now pine in chains ; the acquisition of Cuba by 
robbery or by open war with Spain, as we fought with 
Mexico, to win a new region for this crime ; and, at last, 
and not improbably, a war with Great Britain, to prevent 
Canada's harboring the fugitives from our oppression. 
Then cometh the end — a return to violence, ignorance, 
idleness, and bestiality surpassed only by those in that 
"outer darkness," the "dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, mur- 
derers, idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." 

Is this our future ? Must our star be hurled from the 
heavens up whose steeps it was marching with such a 
rapid, vigorous, and lustrous step ? Shall our fine gold 
become dim, our name, long the terror of tyrants, be- 
come their byword, our strength for the oppressed of all 
lands change to a rotten reed which pierceth the hand that 
leans upon it, and snaps while it stings ? This we are ! 
It is no shall be. The eclipse is on the sun. Darkness is 
now over all the land. The glow is faded from the heavens, 
and all isles and continents, even to distantmost Asia and 
Africa, gaze with awe and sadness at the pale, cold light 
which we shed upon their dreary realms. But yesterday 
the nation 

" Stood against the world; now lies she here, 
And none so poor to do her reverence." 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 47 

But is the eclipse total ? Is there not a ring — a faint 
and little ring — of light around the blackened orb, that will 
yet re-cover all its face with glory ? AVill not this dark- 
ness pass away, and the true light again shine ? Step by 
step has this obscuration moved on, a small segment in 
1789, the whole face in 1854. The shadowy edge of bright- 
ness gives token of a brighter day to-morrow. The admin- 
istration triumphed, but its forces were divided; and had 
not its foes come to the rescue it would have failed in its 
attempt. Its own party threw a larger Northern vote 
against it than for it. A hundred Democrats were found 
to resist the crime — a hundred in a body of whom almost 
every one was elected on a pro-slavery platform. This is 
a star in the midnight, a ray of morning lying athwart the 
denseness of gloom. 

But not upon this hundred do we rely for deliverance. 
Behind them is a mass of millions, whose eyes are freed 
from the scales of party obligations, whose souls thrill with 
novel sympathies for their brother in chains, whose indig- 
nant voices have gone up to God in petition after petition 
against this outrage, who have seen the slave struggling 
for freedom before their own eyes, branded and bleeding, 
but still defying his robbers ; who have read tales, real or 
fictitious, — the latter far less than the reality, — that burned 
through their hearts like fire, filled them with an agony 
of sensibility and sympathy, and nerved them with an ab- 
horrence of slavery and a resolution to destroy it. This 
mighty mass are recognizing their rights as members of the 
great Republic. Their numbers grow rapidly ; their spirit, 
and resolve, and consciousness of power outrun in increase 
the additions to their adherents. They are almost stupe- 
fied at this awful horror. They feel that it is beyond the 
scope of dreams. But they are not unnerved by the spec- 
tacle. They are preparing to confront it boldly, legally, 
effectively. 



48 THE DEATH OF FEEEDOM. 

Behind the Congressional hundred, behind these masses, 
rocking with prophetic throes, stands the Church of Christ, 
too often, alas ! dumb and paralyzed before great and gen- 
eral sins, whose robes much blood of the innocents stains, 
who in this long conflict has too frequently forgotten that 
she was the Church of Christ, and has once and again be- 
come the synagogue of Satan, and who is even now far from 
representing perfectly her Author and Founder, and only 
Life. For this crime has polluted the sanctuary, and set up 
the abomination that maketh desolate in the most holy 
place. Yet still, with all her faults and failures, she is by 
far the best organization among men for the extirpation of 
national no less than individual sins. The Church of Christ 
abolished idolatry, gladiatorial shows, Roman and European 
slavery. She is beating down with her gigantic arm the 
strongholds of modern idolatry. She is moving into the van, 
and marshaling the hosts against this evil. 

Slowly but surely she is emerging from those waters of 
pollution into which she was led by a criminal love of the 
world, or a delusive dream that, by conforming to the lusts of 
the flesh, she could deliver souls from those lusts. We have 
all gone down into Egypt, holy Jacob and Joseph as well 
as worldly-minded Simeon, cruel Levi, changeable Reuben, 
and carnal-hearted Juclah. From Egypt we are returning. 
Here comes an individual church and pastor, there a confer- 
ence, or association, or synod of churches and pastors, until 
this act has shot, like a crystallizing force, through Church 
and ministry, transforming multitudes averse to agitation 
and abolitionism into the warmest friends of both. 

It has opened the eyes of the apologists of the system, 
and those opposed to any attempt to extirpate it, to the 
truth long since seen by the clear-eyed friends of Freedom,' 
that Slavery cannot remain at ease, eating its bread in 
quietness and singleness of heart. It must work. Like 
its father, the devil, it ever goeth about seeking whom it 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 49 

may devour. It encroaches on the sacred territory of the 
Church. It ascends from her obscure layman and preacher to 
her pillars in pew and pulpit. It climbs into the high seats 
of the bishopric, paling the fires and blackening the bright- 
ness of the holy breastplate of the highest of the priests 
of God. It has entered her organizations, and disciplined 
her discipline. Thus it stood in the Church, as it now does 
in the State, unquestioned, uncontrolled, supreme in author- 
ity and power. From this seat it has measurably fallen, 
from that of the State may it fall speedily and forever. 

This act will give an impetus to the work of Church puri- 
fication such as a smaller evil might not have done. May 
God hasten the da3 T when every Christian Church shall say 
to her slaveholding member, " Repent, and forsake that 
sin. Let your oppressed go free, or release my hand from 
the grasp of Christian fellowship. Leave the holy inclosure 
of those who would fain live unspotted from the world. 
Stand without until you can come in as one who shows that 
he loves God by loving his neighbor as himself." This na- 
tional shame, like the act of the Church forbidding colored 
testimony, will convert thousands of the timid into the brave, 
and incite every communion to the work of purging itself 
and its country of the fearful sin. 

In front of the sacramental hosts of God's elect appears 
the Captain of our salvation. He has said the wickedness 
of the wicked shall come to an end. He has declared He 
will give deliverance to the captive, and open the prison 
door to the bound. He stands with the gathering multi- 
tude, bringing their hearts into closest sympathy with His 
purposes, and inspiring them with a zeal and energy that, 
through their communication, descend on less lofty and holy 
masses like a mighty rushing wind that fills every heart, 
however ignoble in its general tendency, however unbe- 
lieving concerning its own salvation, with these most Christly 
principles and resolves. 
4 



50 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

Are these sufficient grounds for hope ? We see the 
close-knitted squadrons of error. Their faces are flushed 
with victory. Their passion for conquest is growing with 
wonderful rapidity by its late successes. They do not 
stand still. Far from it. Does a victorious army, in an 
enemy's country, halt and surrender on its field of vic- 
tory ? They march on. Ere the coming month is over, 
your ear, if watchful, will catch the pass-word from lip to 
lip in the presidential mansion, the Senate Chamber, the 
Hall of Eepresentatives, " Forcible occupation of St. Do- 
mingo, that Hayti may be returned to its chains ; war with 
Spain, that Cuba may be ours ; yet another slice of Mexico 
for our slaves." Before this Congress rises, if the black 
cloud of war does not again shut down upon the land by 
the decree of President and Senate, all this may be done. 
The future is full of portents dire. The wicked rule ; the 
righteous are hidden. 

But the growth of the anti-slavery sentiment has been 
more rapid and strong than that of pro-slavery dominion. 
So far as opinion is concerned — and that is very far — the 
North is disinthralled. Opinion will soon ripen into convic- 
tion of duty, and conviction work itself into action. We 
shall see, I hope, men of every political and religious faith 
bound together by one feeling, one vow, one act, never to 
rest from battle till our government is emancipated from 
this sin. Not only may we see this feeling in the North, 
but the Spirit of God and the Conscience of man are bound 
by no sectional limits. Over that vast region the light is 
breaking. May it prove the light of the morning. A free 
press, full of denunciations against slavery, lives and even 
flourishes in Virginia. The people of Kentucky thrust a 
slaveholding murderer from their borders.* He is pre- 
served from a felon's fate solely in consequence of his 

* Matt. "Ward, of Louisville, Kentucky, who killed Professor Butler for 
chastising Ward's brother, who was one of his pupils. 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 51 

wealth and rank, even as every such murderer is through- 
out that whole region. But he alone of them all has fled 
before the indignation of the people. If he is not the last 
who murders school teachers as they would vermin, he is 
not the last, we trust, who will find a popular verdict that 
shall override the unjust wrestings of the courts, and vindi- 
cate, if roughly, the majesty of law, and the rights of the 
humblest citizen. 

Frequent cases of manumission, the increased dissemina- 
tion through the South of anti-slavery books and papers, 
their more intimate connection with a North becoming purer 
and purer with every year and every trial, — these blessed 
signs betoken the coming of the resurrection morn to that 
benighted region, to our now benighted land. Mighty as 
stands this iniquity to-day, like Nebuchadnezzar's image, 
its feet are clay. Speedily shall its power vanish away. 
Speedily, but not this month, nor year. Perhaps the war 
may be one of many years ; it has already been ; but it 
shall vanish away. Not in an unexpected or unseen man- 
ner ; not by some miraculous act in which man meddles not, 
but by one effort, prolonged, intense, gradually successful. 
It has grown by progressive acts. So it may die. 

A few reflections will conclude our sad service. 

First. This dark hour should fill us with humiliation. 
Perhaps you have been very valiant for the truth, now pros- 
trate under insulting feet, and you may presume on that 
faithfulness to reproach your neighbor for his idleness and 
recreancy. But it is not the false so much as the faithful 
that in such hours cast themselves penitently and with self- 
reproaches before God. When Jerusalem lay a desolation, 
upon which the curse of God had been executed, it was the 
elders of the daughter of Zion, not the blasphemers and 
idlers, who cast dust upon their heads, and bowed before 
the Lord. It was not some worldly and timid Jew, captive 
to his fears and lust more than to his Babylonish master, 



52 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

but the holy Daniel, that said, "I set my face unto the Lord 
God to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting, and 
sackcloth, and ashes ; and I prayed unto the Lord my God, 
and said, ' Lord, the great and dreadful God, we have 
sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, 
and have rebelled even by departing from thy precepts and 
from thy judgments. Lord, to us belongeth confusion of 
face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, be- 
cause we have sinned against thee.' " Such were the tears 
and confessions of this man of God ; not Pharisaic in ex- 
clusiveness, but deeply conscious of his own sins. So the 
zealous Nehemiah, when his people had gone backward, 
says, " I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, 
and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven ; and 
said, ' I pray before thee now, day and night, for the chil- 
dren of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins which we 
have sinned against thee ; but I and my father's house 
have sinned.' " 

Even so must we, my brethren, fall before our God, and 
confess that we have sinned. Have we done our whole 
duty always ? Have we wrestled with God as fervently as 
we have with men ? Have we sought his aid as much as 
that of our brother ? Have we not sometimes forgotten the 
slave in our contest for local and temporary political tri- 
umphs ? The judgment of Heaven is upon us. Let us 
imitate the elders of Jerusalem, the godly Daniel, and 
Nehemiah, and pour out tears and prayers before their God 
and ours, who alone casts down, who alone can build up. 

Second. What works shall be added to these penitential 
words ? The crown has fallen from the head of our coun- 
try. She sits in the dust. The heathen have come into the 
inheritance of our Christian fathers, and all our pleasant 
places lie waste. The fetter is riveted the more firmly on 
the neck of your poor brother and sister, and shouts of 
hellish exultation over this victory go up this sacred day 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 53 

around the slave-pens of Richmond, Alexandria, Baltimore, 

and the great multitude of similar prison-houses of death. 

The saintly victim within hears their notes of blasphemous 

glee, and, learning the cause, his faint hopes fall, and 

despair 

" Closes around, above him as a shroud." 

Christian, what is your duty ? — to contend about tariff 
or free trade ? to hold back, in Pharisaic pride, from asso- 
ciation with publicans and sinners, as you call those of 
the party opposite your own ? to strive about words to no 
profit but to the subverting — the utter and eternal sub- 
verting — of their hearers and speakers ? Is it to say, 
" That party which represents freedom is bigoted, fanati- 
cal, of one idea ? " Better have one idea than none. Do 
you declare, " I have ridiculed and fought it. I cannot 
now join myself to it. I have friends and kindred involved 
in this crime. I cannot openly oppose their course or 
wound their feelings " ? "Whosoever loveth father or moth- 
er, husband or wife, brother or sister, more than Me, cannot 
be My disciple.' 7 Is not the slave, too, your father and 
mother, your brother and sister ? Does not this very tie 
of blood bind you to the oppressed as closely as to the 
oppressor ? In Adam, in Noah, you are of one blood ; in 
Christ, of one redemption. 

Will you see this gigantic cruelty marching northward, 
invading your threshold, subduing your State, possessing 
confessedly, triumphantly, our whole land and our whole 
life ? Christian man, Christian woman, ask for the straight- 
est path of duty, and follow it, whatever sacrifices it may 
require of pride, of former opinions, of friendship, of kin- 
dred, of reputation, of life itself. Let not the platform 
of action be made narrow by intolerance. If it be* of 
one plank, and that not an inch in breadth, leap upon it, 
labor on it, seek to widen it, never desert it until all the 
land stands erect upon its broad base. Toil until the mus- 



54 THE DEATH OE FREEDOM. 

tard seed becomes a mighty tree, the stone by rolling en- 
larges and fills the whole earth. The stone which the 
builders so disdainfully reject shall yet become the head of 
the corner, the capstone of universal liberty and joy. Fear 
not the names that are flung at you, as if of themselves 
abominable. They are good words, and will yet be the 
most choice and honored titles of this hour. The brave 
Senator Wade, of Ohio, said, in that fight in the night and 
with the night, that until this warfare was ended by the 
triumph of the right, " I am an Abolitionist* at heart while 
in the slave-cursed atmosphere of this capital, whatever I 
may be at home. But here pride and self-respect compel a 
man either to be a doughface, flunky, or an abolitionist, 
and I choose the latter. I feel that my hatred to slavery 
justly entitles me to wear it — a name which I never yet 
denied, and which present, passing events are fast rendering 
glorious." Be an abolitionist at Washington, at home, 
everywhere. It is the highest title to-day of honor from 
God, and will be to-morrow of like honor from men. 

Finally, forget not prayer. This kind cometh not forth but 
by prayer and fasting. f If it has fascinated the nation by its 
wealth, its strength, its culture, and its statesmanship, if it 
has gained possession of our greatest men, it can be expelled. 
They can again become clothed and in their right mind — the 
mind which one J had at Chicago, when he declared himself 
"opposed to the extension of slavery; " of another § at New 
Boston, when he said, "The Fugitive Slave Law is a great 
evil ; " of another || at Newburyport, when he wrote letters 

* This word was afterward printed in the Congressional Globe in 
Italics, as if it was, as it was, an extraordinary expression of boldness. 
It is possible that this was the first adoption of this title by a member 
of Congress in his seat. 

f Frequent national proclamations of prayer and fasting were made 
during the war, beginning with that of President Buchanan, in the win- 
ter before his administration terminated. 

J Stephen A. Douglas. § Edward Everett. || Caleb Cushing. 



THE NEBRASKA BILL. 55 

full of the warmest, noblest sentiments of freedom. Who 
knows but that this mind may return ? 

Perhaps the final act by which this iniquity is consum- 
mated may yet be stayed. Perhaps compunction may par- 
alyze the hand that would subscribe the death-warrant of 
the nation. Pilate's wife may perhaps successfully warn 
her husband to have nothing to do against this most just 
cause — to sign no decree which shall consign millions of 
sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, whom Christ has 
declared to be his brothers, and sisters, and mothers, to 
shames, and agonies, and welcome deaths. 

If the national governor's wife should fail in duty, or in 
success ; if Herod, and Caiaphas, and Pilate — the Senate, 
the House, and the President — unite in this crucifixion of 
Freedom ; if it lies in its sepulcher, pierced and lifeless, 
before a mocking South, a tearful, timid North, an amazed 
world, still let us pray. Death cannot bind it forever. 
God will not suffer this holy one to see corruption. It will 
rise again. It will come forth in greater glory than it ever 
wore before. With powers then vailed, but now disclosed, 
it shall sit in the seat of judgment. It shall be itself Con- 
gress and President. It shall fill its votaries with praise 
and might, and its enemies with shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. Its foes shall be its footstool. With our great 
Senator, at that midnight hour of its passage, may we say, 
" Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to 
perpetrate. Joyfully I welcome all the promises of the 
future." * 

Roll away the stone from the door of the sepulcher! 
Be vigilant. Be tearless. Be prayerful. Be believing. 
We shall triumph, not through disunion, not with perpetual 
feuds, but through the help and Spirit of God. Some 
Washington or Jefferson will yet arise, who will lead North 
and South to the battle and the triumph of true freedom and 

* Charles Sumner. 



56 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 

true democracy. The South will not forever keep back, 
and our Jerusalem, the seat of this death, shall be the seat 
of its revival in perfect power and glory. 

While, therefore, we weep over this death and burial of 
national righteousness, as David, when the government fell 
into the power of apostate sons and priests, went weeping 
up Olivet, and looked back on the sacred city left desolate, 
let us also weep with a purpose and hope of regaining the 
lost sovereignty. Labor in the closet, at the family altar, 
in the community, at the polls, with prayer, and speech, 
and purse, and vote. Labor with a largeness of soul that 
seeks not only this grand and spacious land for freedom, 
but freemen everywhere in a free land. Labor till every 
yoke is broken and every family unbroken, until the feet 
of tender women no more sow blood along the paths 
their taskmasters drive them, until their hearts no more 
sow richer drops of sacred blood over sundered families 
and desolate households, — soon to be reaped in what terri- 
ble judgments upon our nation, ourselves, our posterity, 
God only knows, and the future alone can tell. 

We may go into deeper blackness, but we shall come 
forth into brighter light. May every soul be a worker 
together with God in this the hour and power of darkness, 
that he may rightfully be a partaker in the glory that shall 
follow. 



^<5^& 






y^yA 



THE STATE STKUCK DOWN. 



But those husbaxdmex said among themselves, This is the 
heir: come, let rs kill him, axd the inheritance shall ee 
ours." — Mark xii. 7. 




AST Sabbath many of us — would it had been 
all — ate the body and drank the blood of the 
great Martyr of Humanity, of Deity. In grateful, 
solemn, humble devotion, we commemorated that 
event which at the time seemed, and was, the victory of 
hell. A band of men, eminent in station, armed with 
swords and staves, came upon that Martyr, in the dusk 
of a Thursday evening, in the retirement of a garden. 
They beat Him with deadly blows, they thrust in His head 
the cutting thorns, they mock Him, spit upon Him, murder 
Him ! All for what ? Professedly for blasphemy. False 
hypocrites ! Great zeal theirs for their National Religion, 
for the Constitution of their fathers, for the quiet and 
harmony of their nation. This was the reason : " Then 
gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees " (President 
and Senators), " a council, and said, "What do we ? for this 
man doeth many miracles. If we let Him . thus alone, all 



* A sermon preached at Westfield, Mass., June 11, 1856, on the 
occasion of the assault on Hon. Charles Sumner. See Xote II. 

(5D 



58 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

men will believe on Him." It was because He was an 
eloquent orator, whom the common people heard gladly ; 
because He was a bold and sarcastic denouncer of these 
same official criminals ; because He strove to restore the 
principles and practices of the fathers to their true seat 
of authority and power ; because He pleaded for the primi- 
tive Constitution of their Washington in its true meaning ; 
because He was a real democrat, who loved the people 
and sought their good, who was not ashamed to talk and 
abide familiarly with the Samaritans, whom his countrymen 
hated and despised, as we do the black race among us, — 
it was for these reasons that they hated, beat, and mur- 
dered Him. Not on account of His blasphemy or uncon- 
stitutionality ; not because He surpassed the bounds of 
propriety in His speech, though no sharper nor severer 
personalities are found in all oratory than those He uttered. 
Far deeper, more malignant, more powerful, were the mo- 
tives which impelled them. They were the central fears 
of a wicked oligarchy, who saw their power giving way 
under the mighty words of this Master of the Hearts, soon 
to have been Master of the Acts of the people. They were 
the central passions of their viperous souls, which felt that 
if He was stricken down, all the powers of virtue, con- 
science, ancient name, divine religion, w^ould fall into the 
same grave, and their tyranny be perfect and perpetual. 
Therefore " those husbandmen said among themselves, This 
is the Heir ; come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance 
shall be ours." 

Let it not be thought, in the suggestions of this analo- 
gy, that we would limit the experience of our adorable 
Savior, in that hour of grief and pain extreme, to that 
of any follower of His, however exalted. It was not 
Christ as God, but as man, that the Jews intended to slay. 
For if it had been as God, then they must have been fiends, 
not men, and He could not pray for them as we must 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 59 

for all — "Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do." They meant to kill Him as a man; He laid down 
His life as our divine Redeemer. 

The feelings and actions of His persecutors come afresh 
before us in the tragedy of to-day — persecutors, then, 
as now, blind to the divinity of the principles and pow- 
ers they seek in the person of their advocates to utterly 
destroy. 

Every sufferer for the truth is an associate of that Infinite 
Sufferer in His sorrows, His joys, His renown. They who 
fell in the obscurity of ancient martyrdoms, of Italian 
dungeons, of Hungarian gallows, of Southern swamps 
and cells ; those who m older or are hardly yet cold under 
the grassy plains of Kansas ; and he whose blood stains, 
and will forever stain, the floor of the hall of our highest 
legislation, who now lies pale and weak, with that brain 
full of great thought and high resolve, a festering pulp of 
dead matter struggling for the mastery, and almost sure of 
carrying its victory to a fatal perfection, and of laying the 
noble temple of that sovereign soul in ruins ; all these, 
known and unknown by men, are in the eye of God, and 
stand at the right hand of Christ, in the work and reward 
of human redemption. 

Eminent among these, when we consider the powers 
which he represents, and which are combined against him, 
is he who closes our catalogue. There has been no such 
martyr, in the position and purposes of his assailants, in 
the variety, wealth, and importance of the established and 
prosperous Ideas thus assailed. It is not because of per- 
sonal feeling at the keenness of his sarcasm, nor because 
he broaches unconstitutional heresies, or disturbs the har- 
mony of the nation, that he is smitten with the tongue of 
Senatorial vituperation, and the bludgeon of Represen- 
tative bloodthirstiness. It is because he is the plainest, 
strongest, most eloquent, most single-eyed, most unschem- 



60 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

ing, ministerial, and prophetical of all the defenders of 
Liberty on the floor of Congress. It is because his great 
powers of wisdom, learning, rhetoric, and oratory, have 
been sanctified and set apart for the Master's use. It is 
because his appropriation of these eminent gifts to the 
before degraded cause of Abolition has raised that from 
the dust, and made the hooted, dreaded name of Aboli- 
tionist like the very glory of God, in the light which 
his protecting and illuminating genius has cast upon it. 
It is because in him thus dwelt personally and officially 
the desires and purposes of freedom, that these, its ene- 
mies, have singled him out for years as the central mark 
of their venomous hate. "It is the cause, it is the cause," 
my friends. Therefore it was that in that hall of dignity 
and authority, on that Thursday afternoon, but a few days 
after the anniversary, and a few hours before the time 
that the Divine Orator and Reformer was assailed, a band 
of men, eminent in station, armed with swords and staves 
(how significant the analogy ! — bowie knives and loaded 
canes, the modern substitutes and striking likenesses of the 
Roman glaive and club), instigated and supported by their 
still more eminent leaders, set upon this unarmed disciple 
of the mighty and hated Nazarene, and left him senseless 
in his blood. 

Many murders of the advocates of the truth are in the 
pages of humanity. Yet no one embodies so many per- 
fected fruits of evil on the one hand, and of goodness on 
the other, as this. 

Others were smitten down while bearing and sowing the 
seed of life yet ungrown. So fell the first martyr, Abel. 
So fell all the forerunners of Christ. So fell the disciples 
in those early persecutions. So Luther freed the long- 
imprisoned truths, and flashed them out in all their purity 
upon the conscience of the world, and it rushed upon him 
with swords and bludgeons. So the Puritans suffered as 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 61 

seed-bearers, the Wesley s and their associates, Kossuth 
and his people, Mazzini and his, Washington and his. I 
know not an instance in which the principles of Civil and 
Religious Freedom, in the very summit of their lofty power, 
have been so murderously assailed. Roman purity and 
honor had already fled when Caesar clove down the statue 
of Liberty ; when the Goths replaced her effeminacy with 
their wild, rude vigor. France had no national piety nor 
morality when Napoleon grasped her sceptre. These were 
Jehus, appointed to smite down anarchy, voluptuousness, 
and intolerable vice. 

But here, in the Senate House of this Christian Republic, 
on the person of this simple man of God's desires, there 
fell the blows of Arch-Iniquity. It was anarchy assaulting 
order ; the deepest ignorance, the highest learning ; savage 
habits, the finest culture. It was idleness murdering in- 
dustry ; piracy, honorable trade ; disunion, the federation 
of Free and Equal States ; barbarism, civilization ; grossest 
impiety, holiest Christianity. It was progressive debase- 
ment in every wish and want of man, cleaving down pro- 
gressive enlightenment in every walk of the soul. It was, 
in fine, every vice throttling every virtue ; Satan attacking 
Christ. 

Sumner is not, like the fathers of the Revolution, a 
rebel without any authority save that which God had in- 
wardly given. He is not like Clarkson, and Wilberforce, 
and Garrison, at the beginning of their career, eloquent 
revealers of the yet generally unseen. He embodies the 
awful sovereignty of a Nation, — for every State is a Nation 
in its rights and dignities. He embodies the whole civil, 
social, and personal character of that State. He represents 
its wealth, its enterprise, its education, its philanthropy, 
its religion, its perfect life. 

As it was not a mere man, but the liberties and human- 
ities of a great State and Nation that were thus felled, so 



62 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

the aggressor was something more than a man. Brooks, 
much less than a man as he is, would not have dared to 
strike Massachusetts. It was a confederacy of the aban- 
doned men who wield the sceptre of our government, whose 
strong hand hurled Brooks at the defenceless head of this 
State. It was a systematic, mighty, ruling Sin, the sum 
and essence of all villainies, that swayed that league, as 
the will the arm, and hurled its cowardly implement at 
the sum and essence of all virtues in the person of your 
Representative. Hence the inspiration and the judgment 
which made them say among themselves, " This is the heir ; 
come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." 

Sympathy with the sufferer is, therefore, the least of your 
duties in connection with this crime ; would be the least 
agreeable to him in his perils and pains, and the least sat- 
isfactory to Him whose he is and whom he serves. We 
bleed in him ; liberty, humanity, the future of our race in 
time, the future of unnumbered members of it in eternity, 
religion, Christ, — all are faint, and bleeding, and ready 
to die in the feeble body and suffering soul of this repre- 
sentative man. 

Standing amid the smitten and shaking pillars of all 
national, of all human perfection, let us ask ourselves — 
First, Are we guilty in this matter ? Second, If so, what 
works meet for repentance shall we bring forth ? 

I. Are we partakers of the sin and guilt of this Cain ? 
We sharers of his sin ? you will say ; we, so vehement in our 
denunciations, so valiant in our boasting, so bloody in our 
revenge ? we, accessories before the fact to the murder of 
the whole past and future of human attainment ? It cannot 
be. " Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou slothful 
servant." As this thing was not done in a corner, so it 
was not done in a moment. A long series of assaults and 
martyrdoms of principles and their advocates, patiently 
endured, often as violently applauded by us as this deed 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 63 

by the South, have been the necessary preamble to the civil 
war in Kansas and the brutality in Washington. Sumner's 
fall, the murder of Barbour, the butchery of John Brown's 
son, the sack of Lawrence, the ravages of a guerrilla war, 
legislative and executive falsehood and violence, — these are 
but the central scenes in the national tragedy, whose future 
acts threaten to be so bloody, but whose first scenes were 
performed before a nation of spectators wavering between 
indifference and applause of the wrong doer and his deeds. 
See where the great principles of the Declaration were 
stricken down and slain along the path of our national 
legislation. 

In the Constitution, framed thirteen years after that 
sublime assertion of the political equality of all men, there 
creeps in, in the intention of its framers, though in such 
phrase as permits us otherwise to understand it, the rec- 
ognition of Slavery as a power in the land — a coheir 
with Liberty, of the great inheritance just won from Britain. 
Six years later, that Slavery gets embodied in a statute, the 
ancestor of our present accursed Fugitive Slave Bill — a 
puny father of a monstrous son, yet still the father. 
Twenty years later, the son of this first born of Slavery 
was born into legislation, and we still submitted our necks 
to the yoke. Then came the Missouri Compromise, by 
which three States — Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri — 
were admitted into the Union under its baleful protection, 
while the more distant lands, being without inhabitants, 
were graciously surrendered to liberty. And instead of 
demanding its instant repeal, and keeping up that cry till 
it drowned all contending voices, we said, "It is done ; 
it can't be helped ; it is well to make the best of a bad 
bargain. So, ' Hurrah for the Compromise, healing, uniting, 
enduring ! ' " Then came the gagging of the free speech 
of the people in the refusal to receive petitions for free- 
dom — a gag formally revoked, yet as really the law of 



64 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

the Senate to-day, and of the House till this session, as 
when its author won for himself a hapless immortality in 
securing its pssage. Then came the orders to open the 
mail, and rifle it of all free words, where free speech was 
incendiary — and it was done. Then comes the Texas an- 
nexation ; then the Mexican War ; then the refusal to pro- 
tect the new territories from the invasion of this evil ; then 
the new atrocity of a Fugitive Slave Bill , by far the most 
wicked thing ever done by our nation ; then the repeal of 
that protection which had been so laboriously constructed; 
then and now the full power of the government to deprive 
these unprotected lands of any of the rights of freedom, 
and to compel their submission to the foul embrace of sla- 
very ; then and now the gagging of free speech and act in 
Congress and Kansas, not by vote, as the people suffered 
themselves to be, but by the red hand of war. 

We are indignant to-day, and indignant, I hope, not too 
late : but our cowardice and lack of moral principle have 
brought all this upon us. Think you, if the South had lost 
the Missouri Compromise, they would have been so ready to 
declare the thing settled, and in conventions and resolutions 
heartily, and with hurrahs, shouted over their defeat ? We 
did, and do. Think you the slave power would have let 
their numerous petitions on their favorite subject be treated 
with the contempt which petitions for freedom receive ? 
Would they be content with the barren form of a speechless 
reception ? Would they not storm Congress and the coun- 
try till their demands triumphed, if triumph were possible ? 
Would we have allowed requests for legislation on far 
inferior subjects to suffer such sovereign disdain ? Yet this 
all-involving interest has been spurned from their doors, and 
we have been quiet. We have gone into active political 
association with those who thus choked both our liberties, 
and those of our enslaved brethren in the South, in one 
effectual clutch of death. 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 65 

Thus has "that great serpent, which is the Devil and 
Satan/' in the guise of slavery, swallowed our territories, 
our constitutional principles, our judicial decisions, our 
national legislation, our religious organizations, our whole 
peculiar and honorable character. "The beauty of Israel 
has been slain on her high places/ 7 and we have not even 
kept silence. We hastened after the godless conqueror. 
We applauded his victories. We carried the feeble repre- 
sentative and tool of this power by an almost unanimous 
vote into the office he now desecrates.* We cast the 
words of righteousness so far behind us that for half a gen- 
eration Freedom lay a breathless corpse in the midst of our 
land. Thus fell the great moral and legal principles of true 
government along the path of our baleful progress. 

But these lie not alone. As, upon some field where Eight 
fell under the death-strokes of Might, the faithful standard- 
bearer lies dead beside his torn and trampled flag, so these 
principles have not been without those human souls who 
lifted them up before the people, and who fell with them 
into the grave of the martyr ; ascended the rather with 
them, like Astrea, into the glory which is with the God and 
Father of all truth and its worshipers. 

A little more than twenty years ago the spirit of God 
breathed the breath of life into a few men and women, and 
sent them out into this great wilderness, crying, "Repent 
ye/' But so far from acknowledging them as anointed of 
God for this work, and obeying their commands, we cried, 
' ' Away with them ! Away with them ! Crucify them ! 
Crucify them ! " The whole North is blazing with rage to- 
day on account of the murders in Kansas, and the assaults 
and threats in Washington. But there have been other 
attacks upon other abolitionists which we have openly 
approved, or easily and silently allowed. 

* There were only four States that did not cast their votes for Frank- 
lin Pierce, of New Hampshire. 



66 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

A few Christian women and an earnest exhorter for the 
slave were mobbed by a crowd of gentlemen of property 
and standing in the streets of Boston, within sight of Fan- 
euil Hall, but a score of years ago. How many Northern 
villages and cities, how many persons, rebuked the deed ? 
Their number could be easily counted. Lovejoy fell a mar- 
tyr to free speech on the shores of the Mississippi. Did 
indignation meetings take place in all hearts and homes ? 
Alas ! he entered an unhonored grave. Torrey sickened 
and died in a Baltimore prison for the noblest philanthropy 
which the present age has witnessed.* Did you weep over 
his death ? Did pulpits and presses everywhere lift up one 
cry of horror to Heaven at the deed ? Drayton and Searle 
languished in the National Jail at Washington for offering 
their vessel to a band of oppressed Christians who had heard 
and believed in the Declaration of Independence. Dr. Bai- 
ley's press was thrown into the Ohio ; Dr. Cox's church 
sacked in New York ; Penns}dvania Hall burned in Phila- 
delphia ; Prudence Crandall mobbed in Connecticut for teach- 
ing little children to read and write. Almost every State 
has its stool of infamy on which it has placed itself, not 
with shame and sorrow of heart, but with boastful pride. 
Grallio-like, we cared for none of these things, and drove the 
new apostles of Jesus Christ everywhere from our judgment- 
seats. 

Ay, more than this. As a people we have upheld and 
executed the enormity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. The 
orders of our taskmasters have been faithfully obeyed. 
We have cast the poor slave to Moloch. We have cried 
to all the beasts of the South, " Come and devour." Like 
Athens of old, we sent our sons and daughters to this man- 
eating Minotaur of the South ; but no Theseus went with 
them to slay the monster, and lead them back to freedom. 

* The same in which Mr. Garrison had been previously confined for 
publishing an anti-slavery newspaper. 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 67 

No black sails and funeral dirges are on our Acorns and 
Revenue Cutters, 

"Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," 

but with extraordinary governmental promptness and pleas- 
ure, with military pomp, "following the flag, and keeping step 
to the music of the Union," they marched into the crushing 
teeth of the dreadful monster. Did your arm rise for their 
rescue ? Did your hearts bleed for their agony ? Alas ! 
no tear enriched our eyes. But a momentary sigh responded 
in our hearts to their faintings even unto death. " They are 
only black folks," we cried, as we recovered our breath after 
the short spasm of conscience. " ' What do they know about 
feelings ? ' ' Is it not so nominated in the bond ? ' ' The Con- 
stitution, it must be preserved.' ' Our dear white brethren 
shall have their rights.' ' So back to your rice swamps, your 
mud huts, your comes, your bloodhounds, your unwilling 
pollution, your torn hearts, your slaves' graves.' " Great 
statesmen said, " Conquer your prejudices." Great minis- 
ters preached, " The powers that be are ordained of God, 
and therefore, whatever they ordain (though they frame 
iniquity by a law) is God's decree." Great merchants and 
manufacturers cried, " Our craft is in danger. So, 

' Hence, home ! you slavish creatures, get you home ! 
Ye blocks, ye stones, ye worse than senseless things ! ' " 

and all the people, through the ballot-box, with a cruel una- 
nimity, said, " Amen." 

Beneath this lowest deep there is a lower deep, out of 
which this prince of darkness has arisen to sit in power and 
great glory in the midst of our land. 

The fearful consummations of this hour have their primal 
root in our infixed repugnance to those who suffer this 
wrong. The least touch of their blood is as leprosy to 
our self-important Caucasianism. Have you not, do you 



68 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

cherish not, this pride of caste ? Do you not declare com- 
plexion a Heaven-appointed barrier between the children of 
Adam ? Is there not in your feelings (I will not say judg- 
ment, for the reason has nothing to do originally or secon- 
darily in this matter) a loathing of your brethren ? Have you 
not proclaimed the disunity of the race, and given to your 
unnatural prejudices the authority of the divine will ? Let 
him that is without sin cast the first stone at those who, 
standing on the godless sentiment, have laid the yoke of 
bodily chattelism, with all its horrible consequences, on 
these our brethren,, and the yoke of political chattelism, 
with its past and present shames and sorrows, upon us who 
sympathize, but will not fraternize with these sufferers. 

Hence come the present motions of the nation. Up 
from this deep and long enslavement of our judgment, our 
sympathies, our conscience, attended by the obedient and 
conspiring forms of the National Legislation, Judiciary, Ex- 
ecutive, and Religion, like "archangels ruined," this evil 
Power rises to its present infamous hight of oath and 
covenant breaking ; the invasion of sovereignties ; the rob- 
bery of our dearest rights, and the murder of our national 
life. Judges like Loring, Kane, and Lecompte utter their 
execrable decisions as the solemn declaration of supreme 
law. The president uses the cunning of his brain, the 
strength of his mailed hand, to carry into execution these 
judicial lies, and to destroy the beautiful house which our 
fathers builded of truth, freedom, and happiness. 

Up along the bloody path of the cruelties of our enslaved 
brethren, of the cruelties and murders of Northern freemen, 
it has marched to the fatal victories of this hour. How 
vividly the parable which climaxes in our text portrays our 
national history ! When God planted this vineyard with 
the seeds of a holy religion and civil liberty, and left it to 
our fathers to keep and dress it, they, with great grief of 
heart, and, alas, with as great feebleness of will, let the 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 69 

enemy sow. his seed of sin, so that when His earliest ser- 
vants came seeking the fruit of a perfect freedom, they 
were beaten and sent away empty. And again He sent 
other servants, commanding in yet louder tones to let the 
oppressed go free, and to break every yoke ; and at them we 
" cast stones, and wounded them in the head, and sent them 
away shamefully handled." Remember you how that aged 
and eminent representative of the majesty of this State was 
driven from the chief city of a sister State, whither he went 
to ask the fruit of righteousness for the Master of us all ? 
and did we make that a ceaseless issue with our govern- 
ment till we righted that wrong, and those which he went 
to remove ? If we had but put our heel on that serpent then, 
it would not a second time have thrust its venomous fangs 
into the sacred head of Massachusetts, and hissed in tri- 
umph over our servility. " And again He sent another, 
and him they killed ; and many others, beating some and 
killing some." Growing bold by victories tamely endured, 
or only vociferously and spasmodically resisted, when the 
Compromise appears, converted from its original blackness 
into an angel of light, and asks the erection of its lands 
into free territories and free states, — when the free speech of 
an awakening Xorth rings' through the halls of legislation 
in weighty argument, cutting sarcasm, pathetic entreaties, 
bleeding at every vein in agony for the enslaved, — these rob- 
bers of God, and murderers of His children and His princi- 
ples, "said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let 
us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." 

" Strike down the Compromise," they say, " and these 
consecrated lands are open to our defiling foot. All lands, 
organized though they be into States, will yield to the same 
assault ! Freedom flees the heritage, and all the grapes of 
God are ours. Strike down Sumner, chief among his peers, 
who, robed in the majestic sovereignty of their several States, 
wield their delegated power with the might of Samson, the 



70 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

wisdom of Solomon, the eloquence of Isaiah, smite to the 
earth this beloved son of liberty, and all mouths are dumb. 
Quiet reigns in Warsaw. We will call the roll of our slaves 
on Bunker Hill with no opposing- voices. We will give 
slavery the right of passage through the Free States, the 
right of abode there, the right of way across the ocean, 
the right of traffic through all the land ; and you ranting 
abolitionists shall ' roar as gently as a sucking dove/ if your 
most sweet voices do not chime with ours." 

As one of the most eminent and conservative of the 
lawyers of New York city, speaking of the Sumner outrage, 
says, " If the Senate be destroyed, the Union is destroyed, 
because the union of the States exists in the Senate. There 
the States are equal. There Rhode Island measures Ohio, 
Texas and Florida out-double New York. A blow, therefore, 
aimed at .the Senate is aimed most effectually at the very 
heart of the Union. The refusal of this body to defend 
itself against such aggressions of its rights has pulled 
down to its foundations the only model ever existing of a 
free government. It has struck a blow not only at our own 
country, but at the existence of all government among men." 

Our masters reason rightly. There is no more that they can 
do to conquer the Constitution and the Declaration. Every 
vine of this vineyard of God, every grape of every vine in 
which was His blessing, is trodden clown by this wild boar 
of slavery. The Border Ruffian policy triumphs to-day as 
completely in Washington as in Kansas. Calhoun's official 
proclamation, as the first minister of state, to all foreign 
powers, that slavery is the corner-stone of this Republic, is 
unquestioned law in two of the great branches of govern- 
ment, — the Judicial and Executive, — and triumphant in the 
third. If these thing's are borne, if they are not speedily 
and effectually resisted, farewell, a long farewell, to all our 
greatness ! The land must be given over to the Sodomites 
who now possess it, and its iniquity will be speedily full. 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 71 

" What will the Lord of the vineyard do ? He will misera- 
bly destroy those wicked husbandmen, and let out his vine- 
yard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the 
fruits in their season." Do we say, as did those affrighted 
hearers, seeing themselves included in the vengeance com- 
ing on their land and nation, " God forbid " ? Then may we 
rightly consider the second part of our duty. 

II. What works meet for repentance shall we bring forth ? 

We have been consenting to this death. Perhaps, like 
Pilate, we have washed our hands in the presence of those 
whose arm and vote struck the blow. Perhaps, like Paul, we 
now preach the faith we once destroyed. Yet, as a people, 
as a State, I hope not ; but I fear too many of us, as indi- 
viduals, have washed our hands in vain. We were indiffer- 
ent to the perils and defeats of freedom. We eagerly 
snatched and swallowed the few beggarly slops of office 
and enactments which our shrewd Southern masters tossed 
us. We selfishly let Christ be scourged and crucified in 
many of these His dear children in chains ; in many price- 
less principles, the equally dear and vital offspring of His. 
We may cry, "Thou canst not say I did it." But God 
says, " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
these my " children, " ye did it not to Me." Look on your 
hands. Blood ! Cry, " Out, damned spot ! out, I say ! " 
It flees not ; it blears our eyes ; it stains our souls ; it 
smells to heaven. Not all the perfumes of Arabia can 
sweeten this Northern hand. 

"Nor bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast, 
Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest, 
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea, 
Can wash the dismal stain away." 

What can ? 

1st. Penitential abasement before a just and holy and 
good God, whose justice, goodness, and holiness we have 
nationally rejected. The North must bend the knee in 



72 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

godly sorrow before His arm brings salvation. We must 
bewail our manifest sins toward our oppressed brethren, 
toward an oppressed Gospel, oppressed in its preaching, in 
its discipline, in its literature, in its whole character and 
claim. We must have God on our side if we would dis- 
possess the giants that are in the land of their baleful 
power. And He will not be with us heartily, unless, like 
that other defender of truth who was once a persecutor and 
injurious, we beg forgiveness for the past and strength for 
the future. 

2d. We must entertain brotherly feelings toward the slave. 

You are not going to deliver yourself without delivering 
him. This revolution has far greater objects, and will have, 
if successful, results far greater than that of 1*776. That 
was chiefly for the political salvation of the European race. 
It answered the question, " Is the highest of the families 
of men capable of self-government ? " This is for the po- 
litical and social salvation of all men. Extremes here provi- 
dentially meet. The lowliest of your kindred has hold of 
your hearts. Their welfare is inextricably inwrought in 
your own. They are around your necks. You cannot 
shake them off. You are, you must be, if a defender of 
your own rights, a defender of theirs. "Abolitionist," 
" Negro-worshiper," " Black Republican," whatever name 
is attached, honorably or contemptuously, to the upholders 
of the great sentiment of perfect human equality and 
brotherhood, must be your title. 

If this be not the basis of our present indignation, what 
is ? Why this furor against the slaveholder, if the colored 
race is not one with our own ? He has no objection to our 
holding slaves and carrying them to Kansas or elsewhere. 
" Because free labor dies beside slave labor " ? Wherefore ? 
It does not die where horses and oxen abound ; it does not 
where the dark free man works. Why should it where his 
slave brother toils ? Simply because in our heart of hearts 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 73 

we see our oneness. Take away this conviction, and we 
can trade in them as easily as in cattle or grain. The argu- 
ment is simple and unanswerable. If essentially different 
and inferior, then they are, and of right ought to be, ser- 
vants, slaves, merchandise. There is but one race of men, 
and God has put all things under its feet. If the negro is 
a man, then he is the unquestioned equal in every right of 
every other, man. If not an equal, not a man. If not a 
man, a merchantable thing. 

All this prejudice of ours is peculiarly superficial. The 
seat of the disease is in the skin, not in the vitals, much less 
in the spirit within. Social and civil rights hang on the 
fibers of the flesh, dwell in cellular tissues and animal pig- 
ments. Driven from one fortress after another by the spirit 
of human equality, caste has made _its last refuge in the 
surface of the body. 

Divine right of Kings has become a mockery. Blood no 
longer flows an impassable gulf between men. Wealth 
lords it not over worth with universal consent. Might is 
not Right. The theories, if not the practices, of men recog- 
nize the equality and fraternity of all men, save the col- 
ored. They are outcasts. Chisel a man's features a little 
apart from the European standard ; shade his skin a trifle 
darker than our hue ; ay, let his features and his complexion 
be after our most perfect models ; yet let the feet be known, 
that in his veins flows one drop of Afric's blood, and he 
dwells not as an equal in the presence of his brethren. No 
church opens her pulpit to receive his regular ministrations. 
No school employs his talents and education as its teacher. 
No store gives him the knowledge of business life. No 
workshop allows him to handle its tools and acquire its 
knowledge. Exceptions may be found to the rule, but they 
are most rare and startling. All this 'must be changed. 

We must recognize our kindred. We must acknowledge 
that every man, of every complexion, has in his genealogical 



74 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

chart, as Christ had in His, " which was the son of Adam, 
which was the son of God." It is their wrongs, and not 
ours, that are shaking this land. The prostrate orator 
closed his first great speech for Freedom with a quotation 
that has since been more fearfully verified, and unless 
heeded will yet rive our souls with untold agonies. " Be- 
ware," said he, " beware of the groans of wounded souls. 
Oppress not to the utmost a single heart ; for a solitary 
sigh has power to overset a whole world." We shall be 
distracted by a thousand side issues, betrayed by a thou- 
sand false lights, unless this great truth is our inspiration 
and our aim. 

" While the truckling jurist sitting, as the slave-whip o'er him swings, 
From the tortured truths of Freedom the lie of Slavery wrings, 
And the solemn priest to Moloch on each God-deserted shrine 
Breaks his hondmen's heart for bread, pours his bondmen's blood for 
wine, — 

" While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Savior kneels, 
And spurns, the while, the temple where the living Savior dwells, — 
Thou must see Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim, 
And thy mercy to the bondman, it is mercy unto Him." 

3d. If we thus have a conscience void of offense in the 
sight of God and man, the future is clear before us. We 
know not the exact course wisdom may dictate in every 
exigency, but we know its general bearings and its inevita- 
ble goal. As the traveler sees the desired summit in the 
light that overflows both it and the interjacent vales, 
though he knows not what forests, gorges, and ravenous 
beasts are between him and it, so the glorious hight of a 
Universal Freedom rises before the eye thus divinely illu- 
mined, and the path built by Divine Providence for our ad- 
vancing steps, however perilous and bloody, will lead there. 

Two duties are laid upon the Emancipationist to-day — 
duties as imperative and as valuable as those which will be 
given to those who shall in some future, I hope not distant, 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 75 

day, complete the long and painful work, and break the last 
yoke from the neck of the last slave. 

The duties of the lover of Liberty now are, — 

1st. Resumption, if necessary, by force, of the millions 
of acres stolen from us by the slave power, and defense of 
those who, as the agents of the Free States, are struggling 
to retain it in their possession against legalized thieves and 
murderers. 

2d. The instantaneous and complete conversion of the 
government from Slavery to Freedom in all its ideas and 
acts, in every branch and office of its power. 

1. How shall these be done? The first by the stout 
hearts and strong arms of freemen, equipped as our fathers 
were against the less cowardly and less brutal assassin of 
the forest, and the array of foreign tyranny. Do you cry, 
" What ! a servant of the Prince of Peace, in His house, 
on His day, recommend the weapons of war!" "By what 
authority do you these things, and who gave you this au- 
thority ? " "I will also ask you one question, and if you 
will answer me, I will tell you by what authority I do these 
things." 

Suppose the city of Springfield and the adjacent "towns 
on the other side of the river, on account of their earnest 
advocacy of the Maine Law, are invaded by armed bands 
of rumsellers from Connecticut and remoter States. They 
sack the city, burn and blow up its chief buildings, im- 
prison its mayor in the center of their bloody camp, mur- 
der some of its unarmed and unoffending citizens, and 
overrun the neighboring territory, robbing and killing at 
will. They strike down not only the offending law, but all 
protections against anarchy. They declare the soil their 
own, and will, if unopposed, inevitably turn their pestilent 
march upon us, who are associated with the helpless suffer- 
ers in the same reform, and in the malice of its enemies. 
What would you do about it ? What should the minister 



76 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

of Jesus Christ do about it ? As brethren, as men, whither 
would your eyes, your feet, turn ? "And this know, that 
if the good man of the house had known what hour the 
thief would come, he would have watched, and not have 
suffered his house to be broken up.' 7 How could he have 
prevented it? By soft speeches? By referring it to the 
ballot-box as to whether it belonged to the thief or the 
owner, knowing that the bands of the robber would outdo 
in violence, if not in power, his own allies ? And if Christ 
commands, in effect, the good man of the house not to 
suffer its invasion, does He not demand him to expel the 
invaders, especially if that house has in it all the treasures 
of wisdom, and knowledge, and -happiness gathered by the 
Providence of God for the sustenance of his earthly chil- 
dren ? 

The shapes hot from Tartarus, that ravage those plains, 
are unfortunately encased in bodies, and wield weapons of 
death, and are able and willing to drive every free soul 
from its body unless they can scare them, body and soul, 
from their inheritance. Men, and women, and children are 
now suffering in Kansas the pains and evils of civil war. 
Its clouds overhang that fair land. Satan and his hosts 
have entered that Eden, and finding that they could not 
seduce the new Adam and Eve that God had placed there, 
they are employing all their forces to expel them. All the 
officers of the government join in the dreadful work. It 
must be resisted. We must not suffer the house to be broken 
up. Not so great an hour passed over those who lived in 
'75. Not so great a work was committed to a Tell, a Kos- 
suth, a Washington, as is given to this hour and people. 
" To-day is a king in disguise," says one of our finest brains. 
To-day will be the emperor of the past and future days of 
this Republic. Shall it be the Lucifer leading it from the 
heaven to which God has exalted it, or the Messiah raising 
it to a yet loftier heaven of grace and glory ? 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 77 

Kansas is the theater where the conflict between the re- 
bellious and the faithful angels is renewed. " Of form and 
gesture proudly eminent," he stands who was the second 
officer of this nation, and the head of the (officially) most 
grave and reverend council in the globe. Beside him are 
Governors, Senators, Representatives, Judges, Cabinet offi- 
cers, and he who is the head of this Republic, — 

"Thrones and imperial powers, offspring of Heaven, 
Ethereal virtues ; who, these titles now 
Justly removed, are called Princes of Hell." 

Shall- they triumph ? Shall that land be drenched with 
the blood of the slave ? Shall its sweet airs reek with the 
foul breathings of the master's lust, echo and moan with 
the groans of the poor bondmen under the tortures of their 
tyrants, often bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, 
" always of Christ's body, of his flesh and of his bones." 
Shall the abomination which maketh desolate there be set 
up — the abomination which includes, as its lesser evils, idle- 
ness, beggary, ignorance, licentiousness, murder, every form 
and fruit of sin ? Or shall liberty, righteousness, temper- 
ance, education, love, peace, holiness, every virtue, honor, 
and joy, flourish and abound there ? 

If the latter, those who are seeking their establishment 
must be sustained; ten thousand armed settlers ought to 
march there before these summer months close. Do you 
say, " Let them hold it for a season, till we play with them 
the great game of the Presidency ? " If so, what will you 
do if you lose ? What can you do if they win ? Remem- 
ber that possession is nine points in law. What will you 
do with those who defend your rights in the presence of 
these marauders ? The voice of our brother's blood cries 
to us from that ground. Has he not been hacked to death 
by more than savage mobs? Has he not been shot, "the 
only son of his mother, and she a widow," after having 



78 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

given up his weapons, and while going peaceably to his 
home ? Has not the voice of Rachel gone up to the ear of 
the All-pitying, "weeping for her children, and would not 
be comforted because they were not"? Is not the gray- 
haired Jacob, going down to his grave in sorrow for his be- 
loved son, torn to pieces by those fierce beasts in the shape 
now, as then, of men and brethren? 

" Alas ! that country sinks beneath the yoke ; 
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day 
A gash is added to its wounds. Each morn 
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows 
Strike Heaven on the face, that it resounds 
As if it felt with Kansas, and yelled out 
Like syllable of dolor." 

Shall we let these demons rage there, while we merely 
get up processions and mass meetings to carry the next 
election ? "These things ought ye to do, and not leave the 
other undone." The land is ours : it has been solemnly 
deeded to us by the voice of the country, and the deed is 
recorded in the nation's registry. It is ours, for ourselves 
and our children, for God and His Christ. And shall we 
basely abandon it ? If patriots, fearless and firm, will but 
go thither, and peaceably assume their rights under the 
Compromise and the Constitution, the murderous villains 
will flee as the thief at the approach of the sheriff; their 
duped followers will become our ally, and peace shall be in 
all her borders. 

If this is not done, we can do nothing in the great politi- 
cal contest at the polls and at Washington, nothing in the 
great moral war in the South for speedy, peaceful emanci- 
pation. 

2. Doing this courageously, and in the fear of God, we 
should, secondly, put the whole force of the government 
instantly and thoroughly on the side of freedom. 

Let not party names or men becloud your judgment, be- 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 79 

wray your steps. There are but two parties in this land, the 
Slave and the Free. All the buffets of compromising ma- 
chinery that have heretofore prevented these from coming 
face to face, have been crushed to death in the violence of 
the collision. Other names may float on other banners in 
the field : only two combatants are there. Every issue is 
set aside, must be set aside, but this. We have thrust Lib- 
erty into the outer darkness as long as we can. It is put 
directly before us by our Creator, the Creator of all prog- 
ress in national and spiritual life. Will we again spurn it ? 
Will we again let a name and a party lead us astray from 
the truth ? If the present power, though under other lead- 
ers, retains its dominion, Sumner's reeling swoon, speech- 
lessness, and possible death, are the type and forerunner of 
the dumbness and death of all the liberties of this people. 
Free speech can no more be heard in Washington than in 
Charleston. The North, with its wealth of noble principles 
and practices, is trodden down of the Gentiles. The last 
ounce is thrown upon the back of Issachar. The lion of the 
tribe of Judah bends his neck to the yoke. Lucifer, the 
light-bearer of the Nations, falls from heaven. 

If the kidnapping of the wandering fugitive from under 
the shadow of Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill, — if the drag- 
ging back to death and despair of that more than Virginius, 
who with her motherly arm struck the life out of her own 
child to prevent prospective, not impending shames and 
woes, — if these, repeated again and again in increasingly 
aggravated forms, cannot rouse our sympathies sufficiently 
to demand, with a voice as the roar of many waters, the in- 
stant repeal of the nefarious statute, what can bring philan- 
thropy from dream-land into actual life ? If the robbery of 
our land, the robbery of our franchise and our legislation, 
the imprisonment and murder of their defenders, the extinc- 
tion in blood of freedom of debate and of State Equality, — 
if these cannot bring us to unite against the mighty foe, 



80 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

what can ? Will the mere abrogation of a commercial re- 
striction, whereby our ships cannot bring slaves from Africa, 
set the country into convulsions, if these produce only mo- 
mentary spasms ? Will the declaration that internal slave 
trade is as lawful as the internal flour trade, and that no 
State can restrict it, bring us to action? These are all 
that are left, and these are but merchantable things. They 
cannot thrill the heart, as the dreadful scenes have through 
which we have passed for the last few years, and are still 
passing. They will no more restore us to life than the last 
faint struggles of the dying will throw off that conqueror 
whom the. fearful agonies of preceding hours had wrestled 
with in vain. 

Say not so, aged, eminent, conservative a man as he who 
is put at the head of these hosts, will never lead us whither 
we have been moving. As the President has just said in 
reference to this very nomination, " Men are but instru- 
ments." Pierce has done no more than Fillmore, Fillmore 
than Polk, Polk than Tyler, Tyler than Yan Buren. Each 
did all that the Slave Power asked of them. Each did 
worse than his predecessor, simply because he was the suc- 
cessor. If the present Chief Magistrate had occupied his 
seat four years before, he would have said, had you charged 
him with his present deeds, " Is thy servant a dog, that he 
should do this thing ? " He would only have signed the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, and defeated the Proviso. Four years 
earlier he would but have carried on the war with Mexico. 
Four years earlier merely annexed Texas. Four years earlier 
simply purged the mails of free speech, and opposed the 
purging of the District of Columbia of Slavery. " Men are 
but instruments." 

Who secured the nomination of this venerable man by 
the withdrawal of his potent name from the canvass ? Who 
dictated the platform on which this Image is set up ? Who 
will be the chief instrument in his election, if he obtains it? 



ASSAULT OX CHARLES SUMNER. 81 

— which may God in His mercy prevent. Who will be 
his right hand supporter in his administration ? The boldest 
and wickedest of all the bold and wicked men that blacken 
our history, beside whom Arnold and Burr are models of 
decency and religion. They sought to strangle in his cradle 
the HerCules of our political being, when as yet his divinity 
could be seen only by the eye of faith. He assails him in 
the height of his strength, when he stands among mankind 
the only cleanser of its Augean stables of royal corruption, 
the only annihilator of its hydra oppressions, the onty one able 
to conquer the guards of the pit, and bring out of its long 
death the beautiful form of Civil and Religious Freedom. 

He it is that by a previous assault, unparalleled for its 
coarseness and threats of violence, instigated those blows, 
whose remotest as well as immediate effects he foresaw and 
intended. He it is, that, having been urged to the rescue 
of his fellow-senator, sat calmly through the beginning of 
the attack, and climbed, as he himself says, on a high back 
seat at its close, that he might catch a glimpse of the bleed- 
ing victim as he was borne away ; as a little fraudulent 
leader of bad men in an ancient time climbed to a high seat 
that he might see Him who was to be the great Sacrifice for 
Eternal Freedom, though unlike Zaccheus, no penitence 
smote his conscience, no submission and conversion fol- 
lowed the sight. He did more than begin and enjoy an 
assault on a peaceful Senator ; he led those troops of Sin 
against and over the prostrated landmarks of Freedom, 
prostrated Territorial and State sovereignty, prostrated law, 
and right, and peace, and honor, % and chastity, and life. 
This is the head and fang of that huge serpent which "in 
many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast," coils itself around 
the pillar of our confederacy, and from its capital " hangs 
hissing at the nobler men below. 5 ' He is the power greater 
than the President, present or to be, who, with the crowd 
of violent men behind him, will seek to carry the Evil, 
6 



82 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

whose they are and whom they serve, to a permanent, 
universal dominion. 

Then cometh the end. One of two things follows. Un- 
questioned prostration of the whole country under the hoof 
of the slave power. As the unslaveholding South to-day is 
dumb before the shearers of its power and prosperity, so 
shall the whole land be. We shall be thrust into a seat of 
infamy lower than any living- or dead nationality can occupy, 
beside which Roman anarchy, Greek cowardice, and Jew- 
ish impiety are highest excellence. A nation of Slaves ! 
One hundred thousand ignorant and brutal men the raon- 
archs of twenty-five millions ! driving us into the Atlantic, 
if they so list, as they now declare they can, with a lady's 
riding whip, * — filling our land with poverty, vice, and 
murder, and making the very dust of our patriot sires beg 
the winds of heaven to bear them from the dishonored soil ! 

What a spectacle to the world ! That great nation, 
stretching over more territory than ever saw the wing of 
the Roman eagle, whose songs have all been set to the 
tune of Libert} 7 -, whose Constitution and laws beat, with but 
few discordant notes, the same inspiring measure, whose 
name has been a terror to tyrants and a watchword to 
patriots, that people whose God has been the Lord, under 
the feet of the pirate of perdition ! The star-spangled ban- 
ner torn down, and the blood-red flag with which South 
Carolina marches through fallen Lawrence, the black flag 
the slave ship carries across the free ocean, — these shall 

wave 

" O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! " 

Your meadows and mountains shall be covered with slaves, 
not necessarily black in the face, certainly white in the 
blood, the very images of us their fathers and mothers ; — 
poorest of whites, ruled over by the desperadoes of the 

* A remark made in Congress by Alexander H. Stephens. 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 83 

South, and their satanic allies of the North ! disastrous 
eclipse ! shadow worse than death ! The light gone 
from earth, the hopes of man blotted out, the howl of 
tyrants exultant and universal ! " The glory of kingdoms, 
the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when 
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Wild beasts of the 
desert shall lie there ; their houses shall be full of doleful 
creatures ; owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance 
there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their 
desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces ; 
and her time is near* to come, and her days shall not be 
prolonged." May God through our present faithfulness 
prevent this fast-speeding doom. 

The second alternative, if we postpone our political 
reformation to the presidential contest of 1860, will be civil 
war. If the North has courage enough to fight, though 
not enough to vote for Liberty, before that not distant period 
arrives the struggle may have been begun. This power, 
if again triumphant, will triumph as never before. Not 
smuggled and disguised, but openly will it start on its 
new career. And if its insolence is so great now, if its de- 
mands are so unendurable, what will they be when it puts 
on the crown of authority that the People will offer it ? If 
resisted, it must be under the smoke of battle. The bar- 
barities of Kansas and Washington will be repeated in ag- 
gravated forms along the whole border — over the whole 
land. Those extremes will be joined by a river of fire 
and blood, and this great Republic expire in the ashes of 
fraternal flames. 

" A curse will light upon the limbs of men, 
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
Will cumber all the parts of this fair land. 
Blood and destruction shall be so in use, 
And dreadful objects so familiar, 
That mothers shall but smile when they behold 
Their infants quartered with the hands of war. 



84 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds, 
And Freedom's spirit ranging for revenge, 
With Fury by her side, come hot from hell, 
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice 
Cry ' Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of Avar. 
That these foul deeds shall smell above the earth 
With carrion men, groaning for burial." 



It is for the Christian and Patriot of this day to say 
whether or no one of these dreadful fates shall not be 
ours. It is for us to say if Sumner's seat, the site of Kansas' 
Lexingtons, the graves of Barbour, Pow, Brown, Stewart, 
and other martyrs, whose sod is for the first time green 
above them, shall be visited by a victorious, free people, 
reverently gazing on that blood shed for the first time in 
our history in defense of freedom of national debate, and 
those ruins and graves, attesting the zeal, discretion, and 
courage of the first banded defenders of our principles in the 
field of fraternal strife, or if they shall be disregarded, as the 
Greek of to-day knows not, and cares not to know, the spot 
where the three hundred saved Greece and the world their 
liberties, or where the great orator patriot, Demosthenes, 
banished, fell by a sacred and privileged altar, anticipating 
but for a moment the tortures intended for him by his per- 
secutors — the tyrants of Athens, and the destroyers of her 
name and power unto this day ? 

Read the great speech which excited such rage, and well 
nigh won for its author the crown of a martyr. For before 
he uttered a word he knew its probable effect ; he measured 
the danger before he struck the blow. But three or four in 
all history are its equals in beauty and strength of thought 
and language. Demosthenes against the Philipizing Doug- 
las of Athens, the keen, ready, insolent tool of her tyrants; 
Cicero against the Atchison Catiline of the Roman republic ; 
Burke against Hastings, the wholesale enslaver of India ; 
"Webster against the South Carolinian traducer of freedom 



ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 85 

and its fruits, — with these four, this stands, and will always 
stand, equal to the highest in all the literary qualities of an 
oration, higher than the highest in the sweep of his theme 
— the preservation of the liberty, culture, and religion of a 
great Christian nation. Let every man, and woman, and 
child frequently read it. Read it in a spirit of humiliation 
and prayer. Read it for our guidance in this crisis as we 
do the Bible for our guidance in this and all. 

Let us repent and forsake our slothfulness, our prejudices, 
our cowardice. Let us surrender all minor duties to this 
preeminent human duty, second only to the salvation of 
souls, and even involving their eternal weal or woe in its 
measureless results. Let us engage in the great civil and 
moral warfare before us with a oneness of heart and will 
that insures the victory. The sun that shall roll over 
this earth for the next few months will look down on as 
important a conflict as has ever been waged upon it. The 
sons of God who shouted together over its creation never 
more anxiously watched the movements of men, never more 
heartily identified themselves with the friends of freedom, 
than they watch over and work with us to-day. The lovers 
of our race, wasting in exile, or rotting in European dun- 
geons will be our heartiest allies. The poor slave will pray 
in many a cabin that the North may win. 

If we conquer, the long nightmare of our country is 
gone, the overflowing scourge is stayed. Wisely, lovingly, 
steadily, we shall move up out of the ghastly gloom into 
the light of our earlier day. Shouts of joy will echo in the 
cells of European liberty, pallor and trembling seize on 
European t3 r rants. Let us once stand forth in the full glory 
of constitutional freedom, and the millennium morn breaks 
full-orbed upon our land. L'nspeakable gladness will over- 
whelm the hearts of four millions of our kindred, grinding 
in these prison-houses of the South. Unspeakable fears 
and smitings of the knees will shake their fierce devourers. 



86 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 

But if we should fail, — if the cunning- and vehemence of 
our enemies, the heartlessness and blindness of the masses, 
continue the power with its present blood-stained possess- 
ors, the victory, though in another path less peaceful, will 
surely come. Though they kill the Freedom of the State, 
the heir of all the treasures of the nation, though they exult 
in the inheritance which they will then say is incontesta- 
bly theirs, the heir shall rise again with twenty, ay, with 
twenty thousand mortal murders on his crown to push them 
from their stools. The principles of His government and 
attributes of His nature that have been given to man shall 
not be blotted from the earth. Through the tearing asunder 
of the national ties perhaps, through the flames of awful 
war, through blood up to the horses' bridles, we may have to 
wade to the peaceful glories of a Republic of universal free- 
dom. May He preserve us from this calamity, yet give us 
grace to meet it if it come upon us. If it shall come, and 
after it is passed, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from 
Labrador to Virginia, shall stretch a vast confederacy of free 
and prosperous States, even if over those Southern valleys 
of the plain a dead sea of tribulation shall continue to roll. 

" Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, 
Vines our rocks shall overgrow, 
Plenty in our valleys flow ; 
And when vengeance lights their skies, 
Hither shall they turn their eyes, 
As the damned on Paradise. 
We but ask our rocky strand, 
Freedom's true and brother band, 
Freedom's brown and honest hand, 
Valleys by the slave untrod, 
And the Pilgrims' rugged sod, 
Blessed of our Father, God." 



THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 



And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me ; and 

LO, A ROLL OF A BOOK WAS THEREIN ; AND HE SPREAD IT BEFORE 
ME ; AND IT WAS WRITTEN WITHIN AND WITHOUT ; AND THERE 
WAS WRITTEN THEREIN LAMENTATIONS, AND MOURNING, AND WOE." 

— Ezekiel ii. 9, 10. 




HE great battle is over, and the Slave Power, as 
of old, as in all onr national conflicts, when its 
dominion has been contested, remains master of 
the field. We come, my brethren, nnder its per- 
mission, to consider the results of the battle — a permission 
granted us for the present,, and because we are in this 
remote New England ; a permission forbidden our brothers 
under the hoof of this Satan, forbidden even our own na- 
tional representatives, who are soon to assemble at the foot 
of its throne ; a privilege soon to be forbidden us in this 
distant locality, and soon to be resigned by us, unless God, 
in His infinite grace and providence, shall interpose for our 
national salvation. 

Before we unroll the book which the hand of experience 



* A sermon preached at Westfleld, Mass., November 16, 1856, on the 
occasion of the election of James Buchanan to the Presidency of the 
United States. See Note III. 

(87) 



88 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

and truth has sent out to us, the roll of our fast-coming 
history, — we will seek to remove two obstacles that some 
think should seal our lips with dumbness. They are, that 
we are attacking- an ancient and honorable political party, 
and that we are intruding in priestly vestments upon for- 
bidden ground. 

Both of these objections are answered by an examination 
of the battle-cries of the campaign. What were the shouts 
that went up from every corner of the vast field ? that rung 
out over all the land and all the world ? Not tariff and 
free trade, not banks and sub-treasury, not retrenchment in 
the public expenditures, not foreign aggressions or sailors' 
rights — a cry that shook the land in the days of Madison. 

Three war-cries freight the air — Disunion, Romanism, 
Slavery. , These three fears assailed the hearts of the 
people. Every one of them is a moral, a religious, a 
Christian question. Every one of them demands the earnest 
attention of the minister of Christ. If he cannot discuss 
these evils ; if he cannot present to your consciences that 
among them which is the most threatening and deadly, 
when it excels all others, and thrusts its poisoned dagger 
into the vitals of the national honor, and even life ; if he 
cannot descry and declare the form and the coming- of Anti- 
christ, and rally the allies of the Lord Jesus to his over- 
throw, — when can he speak ? 

These censures come chiefly from those who have no 
experimental knowledge of Christian faith and duties ; who 
are rejecters of Christ, and especial haters of His ambassa- 
dors. They are hardly competent to teach the preachers of 
the Gospel the message He commissions them to bear. It 
will be well for these self-appointed, and somewhat too 
self-important, overseers of the ministry, to remember that 
not one word of instruction, as recorded in this Book, for- 
bids the discussion of every question that affects humanity. 
Their mission is to preach a full salvation, salvation from 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 89 

all sin, personal, social, national. It is to rebuke all iniquity 
in high places or low, whether centering in the palace or 
rioting in the multitudinous madness of the whole nation. 
So far from being forbidden to intermeddle in national and 
political matters, they are, by the especial orders of God 
Himself, given to many of their predecessors, and by His 
general orders, issued alike to all, especially commanded to 
interfere in the affairs of men. While to all other digni- 
taries it is said, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my 
prophets no harm ; " to them He commands to preach before 
all offenders the preaching He gives unto them. While David, 
the general and the politician, for only eating the bread of 
the priests, endangered his life ; while he was forbidden to 
touch the ark, priest and prophet were commanded to meddle 
with his private as well as official affairs, and to pierce his 
soul in the very hour of his pride and vain-glory. 

While King Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for his in- 
terference with the duties of the minister, the ministers 
Elijah and Elisha, confronted, by God's order, the ungodly 
king of Israel, when he was seeking, for personal ends, the 
ruin of the nation. Paul reasoned with Governor Felix on 
his official no less than his personal sins. Everywhere God 
puts this peculiar honor on His servant, giving him au- 
thority to rebuke kings and nations, and forbidding them to 
rebuke him. 

It is one of the devices of Satan by which he seeks to 
harden your hearts against the truth, and make you deaf 
to your duty against the greatest sin of this or of any age, 
that the servant of Christ must not expose it, because, 
forsooth, it has compelled a political party to become its 
most active slave. What is this "consecrated politics " that 
is beyond the reach of the Word of God, and too sacred to be 
condemned by Him ? Ah, my friends, it is not the sacred- 
ness, nor the political relations, of the theme that causes 
this denunciation of God's ministers, but because it is so 



90 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

thoroughly interwoven with the ambition, wealth, trade, and 
fashion of the land. Therefore they seek to screen it from 
the wrath of God, and defame His servants, who dare de- 
nounce it, as traveling beyond their province in human affairs 
over which God has set them. 

They cry out, as did Mr. Douglas to the thousands of 
God's ministers, "Let State affairs alone." "Attend to 
your concerns, while we are allowed to plunder and murder 
at our will all the interests of freedom and religion." Far 
more properly may the highwayman, while he is knocking 
down and plundering his victims, command them to desist 
from preaching against theft, and confine their discourse to 
the abstract nature of God, or sin, or holiness. 

Ministers are tarred and feathered, are scourged and shot 
by the nefarious power of slavery, and that, too, because 
they are ministers. Aged and eminent members of the 
church have been killed in attempting to save the lives of 
their ministerial brethren. Clergymen are treated with foul 
slanders, by the chiefs of the Republic, for a respectful and 
solemn petition. But when all these persistent and organ- 
ized acts of hostility are waged against them and their 
cause, they must not open their lips in defense, not of them- 
selves, but even of Christ and His children, bought and sold 
by wicked men, because it is interfering with politics. 

Away with all such blasphemous folly. We ask no par- 
don for entering this arena. The greatest crimes that ever 
broke away from hell, and emerged on this fair earth, are 
being defiantly committed by the rulers of this nation — 
crimes against every virtue, every grace, every joy ; crimes 
of which robbery of purse and murder of the body are its 
least expressions. Robbery of the man himself, not his 
pennies, murder of his soul, not his body merely, are its 
daily, its hourly deeds. God forbid that I should keep 
silence. " Son of man/' says the same Voice to the same 
listener, whose words are the motto for our discourse, says 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 91 

the same Voice to every one of His ambassadors in every 
age, " Son of man, get thee unto the house of Israel, and 
speak My words unto them. For thou art not sent to a 
people of a strange speech and of a hard language, but to 
the house of Israel, son of man." 

But not from these rebellious hearts do we expect a favor- 
able ear. There are, however, a few who, though knowing 
the power of Christ and the obligation of Christians, have 
fallen into this error. Not because they doubt the right 
and duty of the minister of Christ to denounce national 
sins, but because they deny that these sins have become the 
life and power of the party they support. Prove this to 
them, and they will be among the most earnest supporters 
of their brethren in these declarations. It is to these and 
all other followers of Christ, and well-wishers of His cause, 
that I appeal to-night. I ask your serious and prayerful 
investigation of the subject before us. I come in no parti- 
san spirit. The Spirit of the Lord God, I humbly trust, is 
upon me. I come not to secure the triumph of any political 
organization as such, but to present the truth as it exhibits 
itself in the roll of recent history, and is rapidly unfolding 
its fearful future — lamentations, mourning, and woe. 

I must speak plain words. I shall not hesitate, as have 
not my forerunners in this sacred office, to mention by name 
the individuals and organizations that have wrought our fall, 
and are preparing to lead us onward and downward to yet 
more horrible .crimes, even to the spoiling of the whole peo- 
ple of all the treasures of freedom and religion which their 
fathers left them. I may speak to incredulous ears. So 
did Jeremiah and Josiah, and John the Baptist, and Christ. 
How vividly the authority that commissioned Ezekiel sounds 
in our ears, both its orders and the reception of them and of 
those who proclaim them by those to whom the word is sent! 
— " Son of man, I send thee unto the children of Israel, to a 
rebellious nation, that have rebelled against me ; they and 



92 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

their fathers have transgressed against me even to this day. 
For they are impudent children and stiff-hearted. I do send 
thee unto them, and thou shalt say unto them, ' Thus saith 
the Lord.' And thou shalt speak My words unto them, 
whether they will hear or whether they will forbear : for 
they are most rebellious. But thou, son of man, hear what 
I say unto thee. Be not thou rebellious, like that rebellious 
house. Open thy mouth, and eat that I give unto thee. 
And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me, and 
lo, a roll of a book was therein. And He spread it before 
me. And it was written within and without. And there 
was written therein lamentations, mourning, and woe." 

By God's grace, I will obey His equally painful command 
to-night, and speak His words to a house that I hope and pray 
will not treat them as Israel did those uttered by His servant 
of old, but who will be earnestly sorry, and will heartily re- 
pent of all their misdoings, and who will proceed so far as in 
them lies to renew the land again in repentance and salvation. 

We shall consider, — 

1. What it is that has triumphed. 

2. What are its present and imminent claims and pros- 
pects. 

3/ Why Freedom is defeated. 

4. What are our encouragements and obligations in this 
hour of our failure. 

I. What is it that has triumphed ? 

Not the Democratic party. Not any mere political organ- 
ization working for political ends. I know the name it 
takes. As Satan entered that creature that was above all 
its fellows in beauty and intelligence, in order that he might 
overthrow a still higher creature who was made in the 
image of God, and whose destruction would be, in his judg- 
ment, as the conquest of God himself, so has Satan en- 
tered this creature of human wisdom and attraction, this 
chiefest of the instruments of our political excellence, in 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 93 

order to ruin that very life which makes us a people, the 
' peculiar people of God, It is not, therefore, any mere form 
in which this Evil is embodied that must be called the victor. 
The serpent did not claim nor receive the honor of inducing 
Adam to sin. This party in American politics, as that form 
of the animal kingdom, unless it is penitent and abandons 
speedily the evil that possesses it, will be cursed above all 
the other instrumentalities that have been the favored ser- 
vants of the nation, and be doomed to the basest fate. 
Upon its belly shall it go, and dust shall it eat, till it returns 
to dust and nothingness. 

But while the Democratic party may lose its high position, 
as it has lost its high character, the Evil that has ruined it, 
that has already corrupted, and afterward destroyed, two 
other great parties will still confront us. The Slave Power, 
not any political party, exults in this victory, and rejoices 
in hope of everlasting dominion. 

To prove this, it is only necessary to revert to the scenes 
and sounds that have filled the land in the last few months. 
Look on the banners that have brightened or gloomed the 
air. Hardly a topic has had any prominence in the can- 
vass that did not concern slavery. Shall Kansas be free or 
slave ? Shall the Ostend Manifesto prevail, which declares 
we will steal Cuba for slavery, if its government will not 
sell her for that purpose ? Shall all the territories be thrown 
open to the foul foot of this monster under the wicked lie 
of popular sovereignty ? Shall Nicaragua bring her gift of 
trampled freedom, and lay herself at its grateful feet ? 
These have been the warnings of the friends of liberty and 
their country. How have they been met ? By cries of 
reform, free trade, specie currency, and equal rights — any 
of the ancient watchwords of that party, by which it has 
so often, and so rightfully, swept the field ? Not a syllable 
of these. How glad would they have been to have used 
those famous battle-cries ? Their transparencies and ban- 



i 



94 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

ners, their papers and speeches, have rung no change on these 
their favorite themes. Disunion, sectionalism, popular sov- 
ereignty, have been their declaration of principles ; the 
first two as bulwarks against the destructive artillery of 
their foes ; the last, the specious form in which this demon 
now arrays himself to tempt and slay the nation. There- 
fore, by the forced confession of its unwilling confederates, 
as well as by the earnest assertion of its passionate devo- 
tees, Slavery is the actual victor. It shouts defiance over 
prostrate liberty. Eead the Southern journals ; read the 
speeches of those who made the platform and appointed its 
Executive attorney, and you will see that Slavery alone is 
the crowned' monarch of America for the coming reign. 
Said Judge Johnson, of Georgia, under the shadow of Inde- 
pendence Hall, "The question of this campaign is whether 
we can buy and sell labor as we buy and sell cattle." 

And now, my friends, let us pause and gaze a moment 
at the monster we have set over us. We are so familiar 
with the word " slavery" that its real scope and character 
do not smite the eye with a true horror. If this nation stood 
to-day perfectly free from this iniquity, and could behold it 
approaching its shores, and demanding the sovereignty, we 
should rise up as one man against the hellish foe. Our 
fright at the coming of the Pope, and his enthronement 
among us, at our possible subjection to Czar or Sultan, 
would be a courage and a joy to that which would palsy our 
soul when this prince of darkness rose up before us. We 
talk about it as flippantly and thoughtlessly as we do about 
the weather. We shudder at Mormon polygamy, at Mexi- 
can anarchies, at British domination on the North, at the 
surrender of a fraction of the Pacific Coast to her hands. 
All these are angels of light in comparison with that which 
excites but the feeblest fear. We call it patriarchal, scrip- 
tural, domestic, respectable, Christian. We declare that it 
has the right to enter and abide in any State or Territory, if 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 95 

a majority of its white men, who care enough about the 
matter to vote upon it, shall choose to allow it. Many 
pleasant things are said concerning it, and, though it has 
some bad features, as an eminent New York divine has said, 
" they are only such as are incident to every other human 
relation." 

What is it that is so nice and honorable, and pious and 
Biblical ? It is the taking of a human being, and selling 
him like a beast. It is the working of him without recom- 
pense ; refusing his mind the light it seeks ; refusing his 
soul the grace it needs ; refusing his heart the affections it 
craves ; making his conjugal, parental, and filial ties depend 
upon his master's pleasure. This is Slavery, American Sla- 
very, the only Euler in the Republic of the United States. 

Consider the abominations it sets up, not casual, inciden- 
tal, perishable offshoots, but its essential and inevitable life ; 
its blood and being. 

Begin at its beginning. In the cot of poor parents a 
child is born. Not in Africa, but in America, under the 
Capitol itself, that stands so proudly in the very heart of 
the land. Their breasts thrill with joy unspeakable, as yours, 
parents, when God sends such an angel to your arms. They 
feel and accept the sacred responsibility. The father lays 
plans for his future, in all of which this babe holds a promi- 
nent place. "He shall bear my name," he says to himself, 
"to coming generations. Through him I will build up my 
family in the earth." The parents talk over the name by 
which he shall be called, his education, his profession, his 
whole future life. They grow happy in his growth, famous 
in his fame. In the midst of their blissful dreams, a man 
enters, perhaps a member of the church, a minister even of 
Jesus Christ, and, paying no attention to the outflow of the 
parental nature, not even regarding its first wish, — that of 
a name of their choice, — says, "Don't trouble yourself 
about that. Call him Tom, or Csesar, or January," or 



96 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

whatever odd or fancy name comes into his mind. " Don't 
worry about his future. Though his father, you have nothing 
to do with that." He follows the condition of his mother. 
She is a slave. All the freedom enjoyed by his father, if he 
happens to have a little nominal liberty, avails him nought. 
She is, perhaps, allowed to care for him, for a few moments a 
day, taken from her toil in the field. But this privilege may 
be taken away at any moment. The master's whim or necessity 
may sell the babe from his mother's breast. Hastening to her 
hut to feed him, she may find him gone. Put upon the block 
with him, the purchaser may decline the incumbrance, and the 
child is tossed aside as a worthless bit of baggage, and his 
mother driven away in an agony that God only knows or 
can avenge. These cases occur by the thousands. This it is 
to be born a slave. Thus is this wonderful gift of Heaven, 
this soul fashioned in the similitude of God, this beautiful 
house of clay, tented with his loving and artistic hand, de- 
based by the wickedness of man. It is snatched from its 
father's arms, and, after being left perhaps for a day or two 
upon its mother's breast, is set up in the market-place, 
knocked down to the chance bidder, and sent on the doleful 
path of a horrible future. 

Who gave this crime power to thus legally tear the child 
from its father, and declare its mother was its sole represen- 
tative ? Whence comes that law ? Is the woman the 
appointed head of the family ? Is she its exclusive head ? 
Does the son never represent the father ? Is the law of 
primogeniture so popular in all ages, and so frequently sug- 
gested in the Scriptures, contradictory to all human ex- 
perience ? Is there any such law among even the lower 
animals, with whom their "owner" rates them ? Nay, it is 
simply the arbitrary will of the robber who has stolen this 
child from his parents, as he has stolen the parents from 
themselves ; who robbed him of his freedom before he was 
born, and now steals him from his father, to whom he is born, 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 97 

and will soon steal him from his mother, from whom he is 
born. It claims to be from Rome. It is from the Devil. 

But the crime does not stop here. If the babe was actual- 
ly given to its mother, though its father were excluded, it 
might yet be well. She would act her own and her hus- 
band's part, and lavish on the bereaved and beloved one a 
double portion of her heart. But it is not hers. It follows 
her condition, not her. She is property. So are her babes. 
She is not her own property. They are not hers. She is 
subject to her master's fortune. They must follow her fate. 
Her daughter — what horrors arise in her soul as she looks 
upon that lovely infant — her daughter ! What a fate 
awaits her ! What a life of toil, of infamy, of ignorance, of 
suffering! the more beautiful, the more awful. Naturally 
may she be tempted to deliver, by the stroke of death, that 
beautiful body, and more beautiful soul, from its unutterable 
future. 

Both parents are thus robbed of this darling gift of God, 
not by the gipsy snatch, rare and lawless, not by a whirl 
of maddening passion, but by sober and written Law, where- 
of ministers and members of the professed Church of Christ, 
statesmen of the highest rank, judges of most rigid legal 
righteousness, and even philanthropists of tender hearts, are 
the enactors, advocates, and supporters. How horrible our 
sin ! How more horrible will be our punishment ! 

If left with its parents for a season, it is as the calf is left 
with its dam, awaiting the owner's need or wish. Na} r , it 
has less privileges than that creature, for the animal's 
mother may train it after her nature, to the utmost of her 
capacity. These sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty 
are not suffered to be developed by their affectionate parents 
according to the nature He has given them. Though per- 
mitted to remain in their arms, they are forbidden to receive 
any real education. They must not be taught to read or even 
pray. They grow up, a youth manly and self-reliant, a maiden 
1 



98 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

modest and comely. Are these blessings ? To your sons 
and daughters they are. Not so with this piece of market- 
able flesh. Their heaviest curse is their intelligence, their 
manliness, their modesty, their beauty. For their fate 
violates and crushes these noble instincts. They enter the 
holy estate of matrimony. It is a cheat and a lie. They are 
coupled like cattle subject to their owner's will. He takes 
that wife from her husband at any impulse of passion, the 
husband from his wife under any purpose of self-interest. 
They are parted or united as indifferently as you would 
separate a yoke of oxen. 

And this is Biblical, patriarchal, Christian. This is what 
Abraham practiced and Paul commanded. God forbid ! It 
is a vile slander on the Word and the children of God. 
The servitude of Abraham and of the Hebrew bondmen was 
as the servitude of factory hands to their employer, or 
feudal retainers to their master. They were his proper- 
ty only as you are the property of the man who employs 
you. Abraham's servants could have left him at any time. 
One he sent away with her child free, by the orders of 
his wife — a generosity no Southern Abraham is equal to. 
Our jealous Sarahs sell their Hagars and Ishmaels ; they 
never emancipate them. They were retainers, armed and 
independent. One of his slaves was the head of his house. 
Paul's advice was to you, whether in shop or store, " Ser- 
vants, obey your masters." God in this word sets before 
us the law of employer and employed — the great rule for 
the management of free industry ; a rule that is fitted for 
every estate on earth, for every relation, duty, and hour of 
eternity. 

This sin of sins against God and man has no small and 
obscure being. It rules over four millions of immortal souls. 
It covers with its death-shade one half of the Republic. It 
has held the reins of power under other drivers these many 
years, and now, in its own person, it openly ascends the 



ELECTION OE JAMES BUCHANAN. 99 

chariot-seat. A weak old man, and a debauched party, pro- 
fess to be charioteers, but this demoniac power sits on their 
necks. He is the avowed, he the sole, owner and lessee of 
America — her imperator and tyrannus, her single sovereign 
and lord. 

Before the eyes of the world, beneath the eyes of Heaven 
and of Christ, thus stands the American Republic to-day. 
It has seen its threescore years and ten, and if, by reason of 
the immense strength of the principles received from its 
fathers, it has reached fourscore years, yet is its strength 
labor and sorrow. It will be soon cut off and fly away, unless 
it hastens to repent and forsake utterly this unspeakable in- 
iquity. Its glory is gone. " Ichabod," " Ichabod," is on all 
its walls. Freedom, humanity, religion, are excluded from 
the national policy, and national idea. The Declaration of 
Independence, which inspired Jefferson, and Adams, and 
Lafayette, and Washington, which sustained the hearts of 
the people with its breath of life divine, amid the terrible 
pressure of years of conflict, which received political form 
and substance in our Constitution, — that Declaration, as 
avowed by one of the ablest advocates of this triumphant 
power, and as adopted by all its leaders, is but glittering 
generalities, unworthy the regard of sober men, although 
these glittering generalities are those very principles with- 
out which Christianity is a lie and civilization a dream. 

Thus we stand. Clouds and darkness are round about us. 
The air is pierced with lightning, and shaken by mutterings 
of avenging thunder. 

II. What shall the end be ? 

Some suppose that the party retaining the power, the 
party, rather, ascending to power, will be very gentle, en- 
croaching on no one's rights, and doing nothing to advance 
its own ends. We read in some journals great professions 
of this character. They have thus influenced many votes, 
and doubtless decided the contest. Are they well grounded ? 



100 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

I have no desire to be an alarmist. I shall strive to state 
only what is probable, and what is logically certain to be 
attempted. I know there are thrills of terror at the im- 
mense vote for freedom, and that these emotions may re- 
strain its progress along the course which its position and 
existence compel it to march. I do not say the slave power 
will attempt to carry out oil its designs ; but it will and 
must push forward the most advanced of them to completion, 
and encourage the less developed in their growth. Such 
necessity is laid upon it. It is consistent with every human, 
with every inhuman, principle that actuates its disciples. 

Read the dreadful programme which the nation by last 
Tuesday's action has declared shall be hers for the next 
quadrennian. Note that in all the list there is not one 
sentiment of true Democracy, humanity, or Christianity. 

First and foremost, the administration will put forth all its 
power to make Kansas a Slave State. Hear the reasons for 
this opinion : — 

1. They have set their heart upon it — carried all the 
preliminaries up to the last act but one ; carried them with a 
rush, a violence, a'madness, which has not hesitated at fraud, 
robbery, arson, and murder. They will not abandon the 
lands they have stolen from the Free States, and which they 
have many times ravaged by bloody hordes ; where they 
have committed such brutal murders as to give them a name 
below every name in the annals of man ; where they now 
" sit, shapes hot from hell," in all the form and pomp of 
sovereignty that obtains in Pandemonium itself. They never 
will resign that power at the call of an administration of 
their own right hand's making. These bull-dogs will not 
let go their grip upon the throat of Kansas by any cry from 
Washington, if one should be made. But it will not be 
made. They know too well that they are Washington. These 
janizaries have made the Sultan, these cardinals the Pope ; and 
they are too wise to have made one greater than themselves. 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 101 

2. But not only will they have Kansas because they have 
steeped themselves in such iniquity to get it, they must 
have it of political necessity. They want no Free State 
cordon around Missouri. The}" will have none if their fierce 
and tireless zeal can prevent it. It will be impossible to 
keep this Slave State in their hands, shot through as it is 
with free sentiments, if Kansas becomes free. And if Mis- 
souri falls, the whole demoniac arch totters to its base, and 
tumbles to the nethermost hell. Kansas or nothing, is their 
clear discernment and purpose. For slavery in Kansas 
they will fight, because they are thus battling for slavery in 
Virginia and South Carolina.* 

3. They will wage this conflict to its issue, because suc- 
cess here is triumph everywhere. Kansas theirs, all the 
Territories will be. They wish for no more compromises. 
They want no barter with Freedom, whereby Slavery and 
Liberty shall divide the Senate between them. They mean 
to have slavery national, and freedom not even sectional. 
Kansas theirs, and this triumph is sure. The law of the 
nation will then decree that a slaveholder can take his 
"property" with him into any of the Territories, and that 
no local organization can emancipate them ! 

Every other Territory thus subdued, all the new States 
will wheel into the Union under this flag, and its triumph 
at the capital is assured forever. Utah is at our doors with 
her twin institution, in its professed patriarchal and less 
abominable nature. She unites lovingly with slavery in the 
edict of her ruler to all the " saints " to vote for him, who 
declares he is the platform upon which these barbarisms are 

* The hero of Kansas became the martyr of Virginia. In the name and 
strength of his Master, John Brown struck at the head of the serpent 
after he had. in Kansas, effectually bruised its tail. That blow revealed 
and confirmed the instincts of both contestants on this then distant field. 
Kansas included the whole in its every part. 



102 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

* 

to dwell together under their own territorial vine and fig 
tree, with none to molest nor make them afraid. 

Oregon has slaves on her soil, and is in the hands of men 
who have kept off a State organization for several years, 
because they saw that the country was not ripe to receive 
her as a Slave State, and they were determined she should 
be nothing else. Washington Territory is in their hands. 
So are New Mexico and Nebraska. Every spot of our na- 
tional domain but Minnesota. And she, in the insolence 
of this triumph, may be refused admission, unless she will 
put this broth of abominable things in her sacred constitu- 
tional vessel. 

Outside of our present boundaries, where sweeps not her 
eye, greedy and devouring ? Central America is under her 
feet. Cuba is hotly lusted after. The three-headed dog 
of war across the seas, England, France, and Spain, guards 
the Hesperides, and alone preserves these golden apples 
from her clutch. 

The African slave trade will be reopened practically, if 
not by legislative act. This does not need Congressional 
enactment or presidential signature. Let Charleston, New 
Orleans, and Mobile offer to receive these Africans, and they 
will be introduced, as enslaved Americans now go to these 
ports from Baltimore and Richmond, under the protection 
of our national flag and cannon. 

Silence will be imposed on Congressional lips. Sumner's 
still bleeding head and wasting frame will be ever before 
the representatives of the Free States, as an index of their 
fate, if they dare to assail this execrable shape. Not gutta 
percha canes, but knife and pistol, will speedily end the con- 
troversy at the Capitol. Moving northward, silence will be 
laid upon the press, which is the mouth of the people. No 
journal will be allowed to condemn the national institution. 
The fiery "Independent," the vehement "Tribune," the 
solid white heat of the "Liberator," the long uplifted 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 103 

trumpet of " Zion's Herald/' the first of all journals of the 
Christian Church in this warfare, and not the least in energy 
and influence, the " National Era," grand oracle of grand 
men, the growing multitude, local, urban, and rural, that 
have joined their voices to the swelling volume of indigna- 
tion, — upon them the administration will lay its hand, and 
stifle their speech or their life. With them will sink into 
dumbness every minister of Christ and Liberty, every 
speaker who urges this great reform from any stage, every 
book that paints the horrors of the hell of bondage, and fires 
the hearts of the people with a burning detestation of it. and 
of its defenders ; all these will this power essay to repress, 
for its tyranny will be everywhere, and will everywhere be 
in peril if this liberty is allowed. Napoleon's treatment of 
the press will be as the little finger to the thick loins of this 
American despot. 

Finally, slaves will be adjudged property anywhere, while in 
transitu, and the transit may be months in occurring. Slave- 
pens will, therefore, be a necessity of New York and Boston, 
and the slaves, instead of being sent thither for shipment 
alone, will be sold as openly in their market-places, as in those 
of Richmond. Then comes the universal reign of the demon. 
The nation everywhere submits her neck to the yoke. 

You turn away with loathing from this cup of horrors, 
and denounce it as the offspring of a disordered brain. My 
friends, every one of these claims is openly made in the 
leading administration journals of the South, and avowed by 
its political representatives, while their Northern allies make 
no objection, but keep a close silence upon these prepara- 
tions, and expend their strength of argument and invective 
in assailing the defenders of Jefferson and "Washington, of 
the Declaration and the Constitution, of humanity and Christ. 

Say not, " Prophesy smooth things, pleasant things, hope- 
ful things." When a servant of the Most Holy God was 
requested to preach a political sermon before his king, that 



104 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

should conform to the general current of expression and 
natter the pride and prospects of his sovereign, he said, 
"As the Lord liveth, what my God saith, that will I speak." 
So must I say, so far as I, anxiously seeking for the 
light, am able to discern it. This contest is very different 
from all this nation has previously waged. If it had not 
been, ministers would not have engaged so earnestly in the 
canvass. I suppose more men have addressed audiences on 
the issue of this campaign from the pulpit than from the 
platform. The three thousand ministers that sent up from 
New England alone that solemn denunciation, in the name 
of Almighty God, against the Nebraska sin, have probably, 
in nearly every case, uttered their warning to their hearers 
in the last few months, while thousands in other parts of the 
land have lifted up their voices in the general appeal. 

These " political," " gunpowder priests," as they are 
called, have no desire to interfere in mere political matters. 
They are servants of no names except the Name that is above 
every name, whose orders they dare not and desire not to 
disobey. I warned and entreated you before the leader of 
the hosts of freedom was selected, indifferent as to who he 
should be, far from confident that one of a more decided 
anti-slavery character would not have been a better captain. 
I have no devotion to men. It is the cause that has brought 
these ministers from their sacred studies, wherein they de- 
light, from the beds of the dying and the side of the penitent 
inquirer after Jesus, into the tumult of the market-place, the 
dust and whirl and thunder of battle. It is Christ for whom 
they are preaching and praying and voting, in these works 
as much as in the more regular duties of their calling. 

The fact that Antichrist has secured this victory proves 
that it will not, cannot be tamely abandoned. The Slave 
Power is no Hannibal, to waste its victorious forces in luxury, 
while Rome is not yet completely captured. Therefore will 
the administration be forced to serve its baleful ends. 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 105 

Two other reasons confirm this view. 1. The slave power 
must advance or die. It is a bankrupt swindler, who will 
have to abandon his show of wealth, unless he can extend 
his villainies. The late articles in the " Charleston Standard/ 7 
on the opening of the foreign slave trade, — articles of great 
power, which should be pondered by every thoughtful man, 
— prove conclusively that they will die unless they move 
forward. Talk about resting in quiet on their plantations, 
undisturbed by the North. Impossible. Their plantations 
would soon be deserts, their homes poorhouses, and not 
even almshouses, for no gifts would relieve their poverty. 
They must grow. Land, land, they must have, to be rifled 
of its virgin sweets, and then abandoned. Slaves, slaves, 
cheap and numerous, to till these lands and multiply their 
wealth. Thus they are driven deeper and deeper into this 
gulf by the highest pressure on man, his necessity to live. 
They are on the steed of destiny. They cannot escape this 
progress in evil except by emancipation, and emancipation 
will not immediately relieve them. They must leap into the 
chasm before they can fill it. 

2. But they are driven on in this inevitable path by what 
will be to them a yet higher motive — the total loss of all their 
present possessions. Two of their chief men have said that 
the election of a Free State President would have killed 
slavery in twenty years. They see by the mighty upris- 
ing in the North, that a Free State President will soon be 
elected, and under the inspiration of despair they will work 
with startling vigor during this brief space of power for 
their future safety.* Fifty thousand men, representing three 
thousand millions of property, who have the national power 

* How vigorously they did work, history shows. They transported all 
our fleet into distant parts, and all our arms into Southern arsenals. 
They appropriated our treasury, navy and war departments to their ends, 
and left this administration, at its close, without spirit or means for de- 
fense, much less for aggression. 



106 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

in their hands, know that it is surely passing over to those 
who will make this vast property valueless.* Will they not 
fight as no men have ever fought in this nation to preserve 
their power and possessions ? Suppose that a system of 
measures were already commenced, or soon to be inaugu- 
rated, which would make every bank and factory and farm, 
in a few years all the property of the State, but beggars' rags, 
would not our citizens do all in their power to avert the 
catastrophe ? f Would not fifty thousand robbers defend 
three thousand millions of gold which they had stolen, against 
all the bands of justice, and provide in every possible way 
for its preservation. These thousands of robbers, from 
whom I exclude all conscientious or indifferent slaveholders, 
are the assumed protectors of three thousand millions of 
stolen property — God's property, made, bought, and re- 
deemed by Him, to be His treasure and joy forever. They 
have the government. Are they going to be easy and in- 
dulgent, and give you, their enemies, all the victories which 
you would have had, if you had defeated them ? I speak 
as unto wise men-. Judge ye what I say. 

III. What has caused this defeat ? Why did not truth 
and right prevail ? Why were not the horse and his rider 
cast into the sea ? For reasons such as are seen in all the 
struggles of liberty and Christianity for the subjugation of 
the world to God. Huss and his people must die before 
Luther could slay their murderer. Bunker Hill must be lost 
before Yorktown could be gained. Why did we not win ? 

* The slave property was valued from .92.000.000,000 to 81.000.000,000, 
the slaveholders of every class about 250.000. This includes minors, 
•women, and aged men. Its controllers were far less than 50.000. 

t A striking illustration of the absorption of all industry into the 
business of slavery is shown by the statistics of Virginia for this very 
year. She exported over 87. 000. 000 of her property in slaves; more in 
value than her tobacco, wheat, or corn. Slaves rose in that State from 
$62 apiece in 17S9. to 8500 in 1856. Abolitionism financially ruined 
her, and she knew that it would. 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 107 

1. Because there was no deep repentance of the real 
cause of these shames and crimes, and no true sympathy 
with their chief victims. The cause is slavery ; the real 
victim is the slave. For the crime we have sorrowed, but 
not after a godly sort. We have not bemoaned our sins of 
omission and commission connected with it. The nation 
has been the abettor and supporter of the President and his 
iniquity. Who has cried, as he saw his own cooperation in 
this sin of sins, " God be merciful to me a sinner 77 ? 

We have had no tears for the slave. His fate has not 
been the battle-cry of any party. "Free Labor is in peril! ' 7 
"White Labor, our labor! 77 This has been our watchword : 
not the rights of our brethren, but our own purses. How 
much better are you than those white and black brethren 
that groan in that prison-house of death ? Millions on mil- 
lions are scattered over more than half our organized terri- 
tory, suffering the unspeakable horrors of the worst tyranny 
outside of the pit. Bomba of Naples — before whose crimes 
all Europe, even bloody Napoleon and the Nero of Austria, 
stand aghast, and cry aloud — inflicts no such punishment 
on his victims as our own Southland does on hers. He 
never tears asunder those whom God has joined together, 
so that each never knows through all their bitter life where 
the other lives, or if they live. He never snatches the babe 
from its mother 7 s arms, and sells it into distant lands. 
He does not employ the fair and pious maidens of his realm, 
as the other domestic animals, for the raising of stock for 
the market, or strip them of every protection of the law, 
and cast them helpless into the lustful clutch of every vaga- 
bond of the palace and the street. He does not hunt his 
laboring people through the thick tangled ravines of his 
lands with trained bloodhounds, nor flog them to death at 
whipping-posts on every farm and in every market-place, 
nor burn them at the stake, nor pour burning-fluid over 
their head and neck, and set fire to it in order that he may 



108 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

enjoy the sport, as two of our noblemen did not long since 
in Kentucky ; and no press, nor pulpit, nor public voice in all 
their land spoke a syllable against them. This king does 
not put his subjects into such agonies that mothers slay 
their children rather than expose them to his cruelty. He 
does not refuse them the offices of religion, and try to shut 
upon them the door of the kingdom of heaven as well as 
the kingdom of earthly knowledge and happiness. We 
do ! Close beside us, but a few hundred miles from our 
doors, begins this valley of the shadow of death, this val- 
ley of real death, not its shadow. There abound these tears, 
and groans, and agonies. Families are being torn asunder 
this hour. " They ravish the women in Zion, the maids in 
the city of Judah." They are on auction-blocks knocked 
down to Vile merchantmen; in slave-pens, awaiting the hour 
of their march to their Southern grave ; in coffles, hand- 
cuffed and fettered, walking wearily over those dreary paths 
to unknown horrors. They are wading in rice swamps, 
sweating in sugar houses, stooping in cotton fields, scream- 
ing under their father's lash, falling before their brother's 
bullet. How many a mother, crouching in her desolated 
cabin, is wailing and moaning with groanings that cannot 
be uttered, as she thinks to-night of her tender and beauti- 
ful daughter, your sister and mine, crucified on the awful 
cross of slavery ! 

" Gone, gone ! sold and gone 

To the rice swamps dank and lone, 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
Where the noisome insect stings, 
Where the fever-demon strews 
Poison with the fallen dews, 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air. 
There no mother's eye is near them, 
There no mother's ear can hear them ; 
Never when the torturing lash 
Seams their backs with many a gash, 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 109 

Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
Or a mother's arms caress them. 
Toiling through the weary day, 
And at night the spoiler's prey. 
that they had early died, 
Sleeping calmly side by side, 
Where the tyrant's power is o'er, 
And the fetter galls no more. 
Gone, gone ! sold and gone 
To the rice swamps dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters : 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! " 

Poets have essayed to paint the mouth of hell. Homer, 
Virgil, Dante, and Milton have imagined its horrors. Yet 
the chief of them — tlje artistic Roman, the painfully minute 
Tuscan — fail to convey, in their imaginations of the lost, a 
true picture of the living fate of millions of Americans, 
born under our flag and on our soil, heirs with us to every 
right and privilege of an American citizen. Plowlings and 
writhings, and fiery streams, and caves of ice, and black- 
ness of darkness were the pigments on their palette. But 
the power that mingled them was Sin. Here virtue lies 
distressed ; here innocence writhes in flames ; here piety 
is encased in thick-ribbed walls of everlasting ice ; here 
chastity is embruted by human beasts ; here Christ is cruci- 
fied afresh. And we, what have we done as a nation, or as 
a political party striving to gain the reins of government ? 
We dared not raise a cry for them, for fear of being called 
" abolitionists." For that word is so unpopular, no party 
assuming it can rise to power. We shouted, and planned, 
and fought for suffering Kansas. Her woes filled our eyes 
and lungs. Great as they are, they are nothing to those 
suffered by other Americans in the larger part of the land. 
And these we feared even to mention. 

We did not deserve the victory. We shall not win it till 
this sympathy possesses the heart and bursts from the lips 
of the people. An American citizen attempted to leave 



110 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

Richmond lately. He was nailed in a box, and the box put 
on board of a vessel so carelessly, that he stood upon his 
head, and in that condition he went reeling along the bil- 
lowy ocean to New York. When he reached that harbor, 
half dead, — thrice dead we might rather say, — he made 
himself known to the captain ; and that Northern wretch, a 
New England wretch probably, kindly sent him back to 
Richmond. He had suffered Peter's fate for weeks, cruci- 
fied head downward, and yet he was treated with less 
leniency. For had not death released the apostle, his per- 
secutors might have had pity on such courageous endurance 
of so long and so horrible a martyrdom. They certainly 
would not have remanded him to severer tortures. Did we 
make the skies ring with our indignation ? How many 
wept because of him ? We talk of our Congressional and 
Kansas heroes. Have they suffered like this man for free- 
dom ? And yet he was honored by hardly a half dozen lines 
in the journals. Not a burst of rage at the poltroon cap- 
tain, not a cry of pity for the redeemed brave, hurled back 
into the burning pit from which he had by such immensity 
of endurance well nigh escaped. Indignation meetings" 
should have been held over the atrocity of that Northern 
captain, and against the system that compels such heroism 
to escape from its tortures. 

2. We have failed because we were not, as a people, ear- 
nest in prayer for the triumph of Freedom. "I will be 
inquired of," saith God, " by the house of Israel to do this 
thing for them." Politicians despise election prayer-meet- 
ings, and too many Christians did not see their necessity. 
Though frequently appointed in this place, they were poorly 
attended. Men were busy at the caucus, but not at this 
true caucus — the coming together with and before the 
Lord. Women would talk politics over their tables, but 
declined to come up to the temple and pray it on their 
knees. Voters thought this to be just like other contests, 



ELECTION OE JAMES BUCHANAN. Ill 

and supposed mere party-talk and machinery would give 
them the victory. Unless the Lord go up with us, we go 
in vain ; we go to defeat, not triumph. He will be sought 
unto for this great salvation. We should all have done as 
was done in some places. Christians of all sects should 
have met together on the morning of election, and marched 
from the prayer-meeting to the ballot-box. If this duty had 
been done for the preceding months, we should have re- 
ceived the desired blessing. Christ is more deeply inter- 
ested in this work than we can be. He is King of kings 
and President of presidents. To Him the earth is given 
for an inheritance. He requires His children to call for His 
aid. His arm alone can bring us salvation. Had the whole 
land been one atmosphere of prayerful incense, — had the 
Church alone been earnest, and instant, and universal, in 
this cry, — many a doubting heart would have turned right- 
ward instead of wrongward ; many a hand lifted against 
Him would have been raised for Him ; many a vote that said 
"No" to this call of God and man, would have said " Yes." 

Pennsylvania is not the keystone of this nation. It is 
prayer. When we pray for the slave as one with him, we 
shall speak for him, vote for him, and win for him and our- 
selves individual, national, universal liberty. " I will be in- 
quired of by the house of Israel to do this thing for them." 

3. We have failed because we were, as a whole, more 
anxious to beat a party than to destroy a gigantic sin. We 
have opposed the President and his supporters as politicians, 
not as sinners against a just and angry God. We have 
sought their overthrow for personal and party aggrandize- 
ment, and not for the sake of God and man. We have been 
unwilling to see that that unfortunate Pilate in the history 
of liberty, enshrined forever in the execrations of mankind, 
was, in reality, no greater offender than those who went be- 
fore him. Pierce was no worse, though a weaker instrument 
of this sin, than his predecessors, Fillmore, and Webster, 



112 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

and Clay. Those who voted for him were no worse than 
the most of those who voted for his rival. All avowed their 
joy that agitation on this subject had ceased, shutting the 
hatchway on our miserable brethren and sisters in the hold 
of our Ship of State, and stifling their shrieks and moans, 
while she sails over sunny waters of credit and renown. 

We are all partakers of our Pilate's crime. The innocent 
blood he has shed is on us and our children. It will be de- 
manded of us, drop for drop, by the God of justice.* We 
must look behind that poor man to the Judases and Caia- 
phases who, for money and power, have set on this weak- 
willed governor to his dreadful deeds and fame. We must 
go behind even these traitors and enemies of our liberties 
and our God, to the arch Sin which possesses them like the 
Legion, the wanderer in the tombs, the greatest of modern, 
nay, greater than any ancient crime — American Slavery. 

It is a system the smoke of whose torment blackens all 
our sky. No such organized iniquity exists elsewhere on 
the earth. If it prevailed in China precisely as it does 
in Virginia, we should vent our loudest thunders against it. 
If it possessed a European foothold, it would be expelled 
by the united cannon of all nations. Ezekiel's denuncia- 
tions of the Judean infamy, in all its minute and horrible 
fullness, does not express the full deserts of this abomina- 
tion. See all the present population of New England in the 
condition of our kinsfolk of the South ; their number is about 
our number. Go from city to city, from village to village, 
and behold only the worst of huts, the most meager fare, 
the raggedest dress. Note their condition. Not one al- 
lowed to read ; not one permitted to g'o from his allotted 
place ; no Westfield man visiting Springfield, nor Spring- 
field man, Boston. No one riding on the railroads, except 
in the cattle cars, and in chains ; sold on your and every 
village green ; driven through every street as beasts for the 

* See Note IV. 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 113 

slaughter, only that cattle go freely in their droves ; these 
go lashed together, the sound of the whip ever falling on 
their quivering flesh ; the sound of agony ever rising on the 
weary air ; and below, beyond all this, crimes against God 
and nature, which defiled Sodom, and buried it in wrath 
and fire, everywhere occurring. Traverse all these Puritan 
States, and gaze on this universal horror, with not a single 
exception, and say, Is there any sin like ours ? That is the 
sight which spreads over our land for a thousand miles. Is 
it not strange that God's thunders still sleep in His arm ? that 
the earth does not gape, and the heavens break forth in fire ? 

We should demand that these horrors shall cease, or that 
we should throw off the body of this death that makes the 
United States a stench in the nostrils of the world, a by- 
word and hissing among the nations. 

A dislike of this evil, joined with unwillingness to extir- 
pate it, is a characteristic of no especial party. The Demo- 
cratic party, now in power, is as much opposed to slavery, 
so far as most of its Northern elements are concerned, as 
the party that opposes it. The foreign and native elements 
of its Northern wing have no desire to see slavery estab- 
lished in Kansas, extended into our Territories, or spread 
over our whole land. The President elect, and ruling, are 
undoubtedly, in their private sentiments, opposed to its 
extension. The fault is not in their private, abstract feel- 
ings ; it is in their attachment to a party, because they see 
in it the road to political success. Unprincipled men, trad- 
ing politicians, are the Northern leaders of this party, whose 
conscience and heart, if they have any, never interfere with 
their plans or deeds. Their followers are believers in its 
original creed, who fought its battles in the days when it 
defended the cause of the people, when the greatest good of 
the greatest number was its motto and endeavor, and who 
cannot yet believe that it is in the hands of the most haughty 
and wicked aristocracy on the face of the earth. They still 



114 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

think its enemies are their ancient foes, whom they esteemed 
the enemies of the people and of the rights of man. 

The leaders know for whom they are working. The slave- 
traders, who have stolen this Democratic livery of a popu- 
lar name and popular rights, to serve the devil in, have 
put the mercenaries of the North into office in order that 
they may keep the masses on their side, and thus retain 
the national power. We have not, as a party, sought so 
much to convince these Democratic voters as to subdue 
them. This party management of ours has retained them 
in the hands of the enemy. In Pennsylvania alone multi- 
tudes were thus kept from our ranks. It is not natural to 
submit to the man that smites you. We may christianly 
turn the other cheek, — we are not christianly required to 
make him our companion and guide. Not until we rise 
above the passion for party success or the vindictive assaults 
on men for mere partisanship, shall we win this great vic- 
tory for God. 

These are the chief reasons for our failure : bitterness of 
party feeling and ambition for party triumph, lack of sym- 
pathy, deep and all-pervading, for the slave, dread of the 
reproach of Christ and of abolitionism, and neglect of prayer 
to God, that His right arm might give us the victory. 

IV. Is there any bow upon these clouds ? Have we any 
ground for hope in the ultimate triumph of Freedom, in the 
restoration of the Declaration and the Constitution to their 
true seat of power ? Is the roll filled only with lamenta- 
tions, mourning, and woe. Written it is within and without 
with these doleful exclamations. The hosts of Pharaoh have 
not yet sunk like lead in the mighty waters of a popular up- 
rising. The chain yet clanks about the neck of the nation. 
Our bondage is to be yet more grievous. But will it come 
to an end ? I can prophesy good concerning Israel. There 
is ground for hope. " I shall see Him, but not now. I shall 
behold Him, but not nigh." It is the hour and the triumph 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 115 

of darkness. Satan conquers in Eden and on Calvary. Yet 
Christ hath bruised his head, and will lead him captive even 
in the hour of his victory. Not without great toil and suf- 
fering- >and defeat and death will this deliverance come. 

Two questions address us. Will the programme already 
prepared be carried out ? Will the defeated principles be 
inthroned by the next quadrennial in the seat of national 
power? 1. We answer, In the prevention of the execution 
of the dreadful catalogue of aggressions on the nation's 
liberty and life, we have no hope from the managers of the 
dominant party. Undoubtedly its Northern leaders are ter- 
rified at the mighty expression of Free State sentiment ; but 
they are not the leaders of the party ; they are but the tools 
of the slave-drivers, whose slaves, sooner than these men, 
will rebel against them. We have nothing to hope from a 
President who has been for thirty years the foremost wor- 
shiper at this Baal ; who has advocated all their measures 
with a readiness of zeal that surpassed even John C. Cal- 
houn himself; who alone, of all Northern senators, urged 
the enactment of a law, making the postmaster responsible, 
under heavy fines, for the passage through his office of any 
document condemning slavery ; who alone, of all Northern 
men, advocated the annexation of Texas, on the ground that 
the South ought to have more slave territory ; who wrote 
in favor of extending the Missouri line to the Pacific, when 
this tyranny demanded it, in order to secure to themselves, 
without fail, New Mexico, Arizona, and all Southern Cali- 
fornia; who dared to do what Mr. Pierce, with all his subser- 
vience, and Mr. Douglas, with all his boldness, would have 
shrunk from, and in the center of Europe, and under the eyes 
of all Christian powers, draughted and published with his 
name first, and two slave-drivers after him, a plan for America 
to steal a province from a nation with whom we are at peace, 
unless she will consent to its sale, in order that the area of this 
crime may be extended, and its power made more secure. 



116 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

What should we say if Great Britain should threaten to 
take Massachusetts unless the Republic sold it to her ; stolen 
with all its wealth, its history, its patriotism, its every ma- 
terial and spiritual bond of union, stolen to make it a bond- 
slave of her own, that her favorite iniquity might be the 
more firmly planted and widely extended. But this did 
James Buchanan on the continent of Europe, when he as- 
serted the purpose of the Slave Power to seize Cuba, unless 
Spain surrendered it. Such is his past career. Can any 
change for the better be augured therefrom ? Is there any hope 
for the amelioration of this evil drawn from his character or 
history ? Alas, none ! While as a minister of Christ I shall 
pray for our new President, while I shall not shut the door 
against his penitence and return, in the fear of God, before 
whom princes are but men, and who commands His servants 
not to fear or favor the face of unrighteous rulers, I sol- 
emnly declare that we have no right to hope for any act 
favorable to liberty from Mr. Buchanan. The dying dynasty 
will be forgotten, I fear, in the subtle, cruel, tireless crimi- 
nality of the coming administration. The last woe is nearly 
past ; the next cometh quickly, and cometh sure. The bow, 
if it is one, is of the clouds, is not on them. The Judicial 
Bench is the servile oracle of this Power. The Senate will 
be no less vindictive than it has been against freedom, 
and no less supple to slavery. It cannot be more so. The 
House may stand against the waves of this gulf of death. 
It may. God grant that it will. Here is our only hope, 
so far as our national action is concerned, for the success 
of freedom, or rather for the prevention of further suc- 
cesses of slavery. You know how feeble it is. Men who 
turned a deaf ear to the wail of Kansas, who have joined 
loudest in insults upon the advocates of liberty, who have 
worked zealously for what they knew was the cause of sin, 
will not be apt to stand up against their leaders. Their 
backs are stiffened to the stooping posture in which they 



ELECTION OE JAMES BUCHAXAX. 117 

have so long been bent. They have no power to walk erect. 
Such men as John P. Hale and Hannibal Hamlin have not 
taken seats in the House as they have in the Senate ; nor 
can we hope, unless the people shall change their mind, and 
then their representatives, that its immediate future will 
differ from its past. A body which voted not to arraign the 
murderer of Keating, because its Southern masters forbade it; 
which voted not to expel the murderer in intent, and probably 
yet in fact, of Charles Sumner ; which voted that the Border 
Ruffian sitting among them, by votes which he and they 
confessed were fraudulent, should still hold his seat ; which 
voted against any search into the Kansas troubles, and after 
it had received the report, and knew of its truthfulness, 
voted not to believe it ; which fought for weeks to give the 
President the forces he is now employing to rob and murder 
peaceable citizens of their own districts in their new home, — 
these are not the men to go backward, and confess and for- 
sake their sins, and do works meet for repentance. They 
will grow more desperate against the light and summons 
of the hour, and strive yet more fiercely to strangle the 
babe divine in its growing grace and greatness. 

We turn away with hopeless heart from the national gov- 
ernment. As well expect to find Judas returned to the 
apostleship, and outstripping Paul and Peter in his devotion 
to Christ, as well dream that Arnold would again become 
the companion of "Washington, that Francis of Austria will 
make Kossuth his prime minister, as that the slave party 
shall act with the disciples of Christ, the followers of "Wash- 
ington, and of Kossuth in abolishing this wrong.* 

As we turn sadly away, we rejoice to see two government- 
al barriers to this baleful progress, foreign and domestic. 
The powers of Europe will forbid the annexation of Cuba 

* The House was better than these fears. The next year, on the one 
hundred and thirty-third ballot, by a plurality of three, but four less 
than a majority, Mr. Banks was chosen Speaker. The "American" 
vote and a year's discussion contributed this victory. 



118 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

and Central America, the powers of the Free States the 
annexation of Kansas to the South. All these States, with 
one exception, have governments favorable to freedom, and 
by ways sagacity, prudence, and firmness will devise and 
execute, will, we trust, keep Kansas unsubdued. By grants 
of money to those citizens settling there, and by other 
equally legal and potent methods, they will, we believe, 
maintain our rights and her liberty, though all the powers 
of the national army, purse, and judicial subtlety, shall be 
employed for her destruction. 

The fear of foreign invasion, which shall set their cap- 
tives free, may keep these Southern pirates peaceable on 
the high seas, and confine their slave trade to our own 
afflicted citizens and our own degraded coast. The united 
front of Northern administrations may stay its progress on 
the land, and compel it to confine its ravages to the lines 
that already inclose it, and over which, like fires girdled by 
bounds which they seek to pass, it shoots its tongues of 
flame, and leaps, in mad desire and endeavor, to lay waste 
the whole national heritage, and whelm State and Territory, 
old and new, east and west, north and south, in one com- 
mon ruin. Only these powers can prevent the' accomplish- 
ment of its designs. We shall soon see whether even they 
are able to resist its progress. 

2. Looking away from the material relief which we so much 
need and desire, but which is so little to be expected, let us 
see if there are any good hopes of the overthrow of this 
Power after the coming calamities shall have overpassed. 
Here we have glimpses of light. Thanks be unto God who 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The 
morning cometh, though also, and previously, the night. 

Our hopes are based on these foundations : — 

(1.) This is the first time in our national history that the 
cause of Anti-Slavery has prevailed, openly and avowedly, 
in a single State. Other issues have been foremost, and 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 119 

this put at the end of the resolutions and the party. An 
Anti-slavery political organization has long been formed, 
and is the real seed of the present harvest. But never till 
this election did it carry a single State. Now the last 
is made first. Though its demands are the least of the 
claims and duties of Abolitionists, — the sharp edge of the 
wedge, — yet it is an edge. More than a million of the 
citizens of this nation have declared their hostility to this 
sin, and their determination to resist its progress. They 
cannot stop here. While faithfully abiding by their doc- 
trine of the independence of the States in their own juris- 
diction, they must say an evil which cannot go over the 
continent cannot abide under the national flag. Washing- 
ton must be free. The national piracy on the high seas 
from Virginia and Charleston to the Mississippi and the 
Gulf, must be stopped, and the government be put openly 
and entirely on the side of Freedom. This party, being in 
its beginning right, will in the end be successful. 

(2.) Again, this vote for freedom will stimulate those who 
dwell in the midst of slavery to shake off the terrors that 
have kept them dumb. Said Governor Wise, one of the 
leaders of this host of fallen spirits, " What we have most 
to fear is an insurrection of our white citizens." The vote 
for Mr. Fillmore is almost entirely a vote against the exten- 
sion of slavery. They dared not put their desires in its 
true form ; but by voting against the candidate of the 
secessionists and slavocrats, they voted for the cause of 
Freedom. This large party at the South has carried one 
State, and perhaps more, and has prevented all the rest 
from going by large majorities for slavery propagandism. 
It will dare to speak more freely under the countenance of 
such a Northern vote for liberty. Had we been successful, 
every Southern State, with perhaps one exception, would 
have wheeled into line within four years: As it is, their 
day of deliverance, though delayed, draweth nigh. What 



120 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

they have wanted was the erection of a free spirit here, — 
sober, guarded, conservative, but earnest and mighty. 
Having these, we shall see in those regions light springing 
up. Western Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, — who has sent 
one Representative to Congress, — Maryland, — who has one 
there now,* — Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, — in all 
these the tree of Liberty will again put forth its leaves, and 
be pouring, we trust, its ripened fruit into the successful 
harvest of Freedom in 1861. f 

(3.) Lastly and chiefly, we hope for success because of the 
^religious sentiment that has been developed. Never has a 
great party, since the dawning of the revolution, had so 
much of the life and power of religion flowing through its 
veins. A hearty sympathy with our suffering kindred in 
Kansas, a patriotic devotion to our ancient and imperiled 
liberties, an earnest calling upon God that He would come 
and save us, — these have been the great elements of its 
being. Never has the conscience of this nation been so 
aroused ; never its dependence upon G-od so tested. That 
feeling is not sufficiently deep yet. The horrors of the 
coming years, whose gloomy clouds cover all the land, and 
drop their rain of misery and death upon its political and 
geographical centers, Washington and Kansas, — these suf- 
ferings and sins will make our cry go up yet more earnestly 
unto God, and He will hear and answer. 

It is this character in these issues that has brought the 
Church and the ministry so actively into the canvass. They 
have not gone out of their way. The political march of 
events and duties has come upon their way. For years 

* Henry Winter Davis, one of the truest friends of Freedom the 
country ever possessed. 

t Though the Southern allies failed to rally, except in Western Vir- 
ginia, as soon as is here suggested, they were the loyal element, that did 
us good service in many parts of the South, and are now the associates 
of their emancipated brethren in securing that land to righteousness. 



ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 121 

have they striven with this sin in their churches, often too 
feebly, always too unsuccessfully. They have not engaged 
in it in order to make the Church, as such, the head or con- 
troller of the State. Not till the millennial dawn, when the 
Church and the State shall both be perfect, and become one, 
will that position be assigned to her. They have not mar- 
shaled their forces as the Papist bishops have theirs, and 
ordered them to vote so that their church organization shall 
be recognized as one of the ruling powers, and shall be 
represented, as such, in the offices of the nation, — which 
act, united with the marshaling of white serfs, gave the 
Slave Power the victory. Papal priest and slaveholding 
tyrant have entered into power as one force. It only needs, 
what it has in heart and voice, and, as far as possible, in 
vote, the Mormon abomination, to complete its organization. 

" Devil with devil damned firm concord holds." 

The true Church of Jesus Christ has engaged in this duty 
as Christians. They have voted as they "prayed, and prayed 
as they voted — for Christ and Ceesar ; not for Caesar only ; 
for eternal as well as for temporal good ; for man rather 
than for his transient accidents. The entire North, though 
not all, and actually but a small part Christian, has been 
moved by the Spirit of God. 

This is our surest confidence that darkness and chaos will 
soon disappear, and light and liberty, in the beautiful order 
of heaven, be our heritage forever. 

Thus stands our cause. The bow glitters in the heavens. 
Though the waters yet cover the earth, — though the waves 
roar with the swelling thereof, — though winds howl, and 
clouds press close and heavy, and thunders crash, and light- 
nings slay, — still there gleams the bow. Before us rises 
the pillar of fire. We must follow it. We may die in the 
wilderness, die without the sight of the promised land ; yet 
that fiery guide will lead this enslaved nation, with those in 



122 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 

her deepest dungeons of bondage, — all of us ; black and 
white, North and South, — into the land of holy liberty. 

" Oppression shall not always reign : 
There comes a brighter day, 
When Freedom, burst from every chain, 
Shall have triumphant sway." 

Let us not grow weary in our toils and prayers. Scoff 
as the wicked may, the effectual, fervent prayer of the right- 
eous in this great war has availed much. It will, if con- 
tinued, in God's good time, — and that seems not far off, — 
give us the glorious victory, Let us refresh our sympa- 
thies with the agonies of our brethren and sisters in slave 
hut and prairie cabin. May God quicken the consciences 
of our rulers, so that they may fear Him and work right- 
eousness. May He distract the counsels of the wicked, and 
break their bows asunder. May you all seek the power of 
a Christian faith and a godly life, that you may join your 
prayers to those that are going up to the throne of God for 
the salvation of this nation. Without this, your labors are 
but half perfect ; with it, they will have the symmetry and 
strength of angelic works. For Christ labor ; to Christ 
pray ; and He will prosper His servants, and spread His 
millennial glory over all this land. The cruel and deceitful 
men that now govern us shall be driven into obscurity ; the 
weak and fearful shall be made strong ; the slave arise to his 
true estate of civil and social manhood ; the lover of liberty 
abroad gather new inspiration from our victories ; and the 
whole world be filled with our praises and our power. 

" Down shall the shrines of Moloch sink, 

And leave no traces where they stood ; 
No longer shall its idol drink 

His daily cup of human blood; 
Another altar standeth there, 

To truth, and love, and mercy given; 
And Freedom's gift and Freedom's prayer 

Shall call all blessings down from heaven." 




CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 



We are verily guilty concerning our brother." 

Genesis xlii. 21. 




E shall not dwell especially to-day on the crime 
that still possesses our land, after the usual man- 
ner of its consideration. Let us turn from the 
dreadful fruit as it ripens in that heavy Southern 
air, and examine its seed-grain that is growing profusely in 
every heart. The corner-stone of this system is prejudice 
against color. Upon this almost universal feeling the slave- 
holder builds an impregnable fortress. Slavery will never 
be abolished until it gives way. As one that must render 
an account to God for what I say, I shall speak. As those 
that must give like account before the same God, I beseech 
you, take heed how you hear. Though I assail a deep-rooted 
but God-forbidden sentiment, as you would obey the command 
of Christ, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,'' I 



* A sermon preached on the occasion of the State Fast, at Wil- 
hraham, Mass., in 1854, and at Koxbury, Mass., in 1858. It Avas also 
delivered at the Forsyth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, New. 
York. 

(123) 



124 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

entreat you to give the subject your candid and Christian 
attention. 

I. Upon what is slavery grounded ? Is it upon the right 
to hold in slavery the black man, or the man who has any 
blood relation, however remote, with that portion of the sons 
of men ? The most arrogant defender of slavery in this 
country has never dared to advocate the enslavement of any 
race of colored men, for all men are colored. The lighter, 
though sometimes very dusky, shades of the Caucasian, the 
yellow Chinese, the tawny Malay, the copper-hued Indian, are 
all painted by the hand of their Creator another color than 
white. No doctor of diabolic divinity has ever picked from 
the sacred page any text for the enslavement of Indian, Mexi- 
can, Englishman, or Greek, though every argument which 
they wrest from the writings of Paul (as did those of old for 
their own destruction and the destruction of the brethren of 
Christ) must, on their principle, be applied chiefly to white 
persons, as these were almost the only slaves of Rome in the 
days of Paul. One text alone, in the whole Bible, can they 
bring to the support of African slavery. Every other reference 
to it is human, not specific — the slavery of Man, not Ham. 
And even that text supports no such theory. It was a 
prophecy announced and completed four thousand years ago, 
when Joshua made the Gideonites his servants, and David 
ruled over the whole land of Canaan.* A broader view of the 
history of these three families only confirms this position. 
The sons of Canaan ruled in Nineveh, and were the first 
conquerors of the world. They became subject to the pos- 
terity of Shem, under Cyrus, and Shem had to allow Japhet, 
under Alexander, to abide in his tents. To-day, Shem, in 
the person of the Turk, holds Canaan in bondage in Syria 
and Egypt, and Japhet, in that of Russia and England, 
dwells in many of the tents of Shem. 

Scripture is stolen to deck a false idol. It is a new argu- 

* See Note V. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 125 

ment for an old sin, an argument without any antitype in 
history, or any authority in the Word of God. Abraham, 
they say, was a slaveholder ; but the sons of Shem were 
his slaves. Egyptians and Babylonians enslaved Hebrews, 
Hebrews enslaved the Canaauites, not for reasons of race, 
but for the sole reason of power. The Persian owned the 
Greek; the Greek, the Roman; the Roman, the Norman; 
the Norman, the Saxon. No one of them regarded color, 
but condition only. The last of these slaves, the Saxon, 
having gained his liberty, and following the devil's maxim, 
" Do to others as you do not wish should be done to you," 
goes out and binds his fellow-servants. He is an adventurer, 
and when he conquers, enslaves. He steals men and women 
from Africa, and sells them in America. Here he enslaves 
eveiy new-born child of the daughters of these captives in 
every following generation. For two hundred years he 
pursues this traffic, and when the conscience of the world 
begins to rise up against his iniquity, behold, he clothes him- 
self with these fig leaves of prophecy, which he gets pro- 
fessed ministers of Christ to sew together, and hopes to 
perpetuate his sin and shame with a pretension that blas- 
phemes God and empties His Word of its sovereign power. 
For if that Word could be proved to indorse this crime, 
its sanctity and authority flee instantly and forever. 

No other modern race but the Saxon makes this preten- 
sion. Spanish, French, Russ, Turk, all but the English, 
claim no Scripture text for their protection. Nor can all 
the last people be charged with this folly. It is the child 
of the American Saxon, not of the British. It was born on 
our soil, of our lusts, of which it is the meanest offspring. 

Away with all such mockery of God and his Gospel. 
Stand forth, transgressor, in thy own vileness. " Lie 
down in thy shame, and let thy sins cover thee." Pretend 
not to shelter thyself in the Word of God. It burns with 
intolerable flame against all such hypocrisy. No one ever 



126 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

before made such a cowardly excuse for his indulgence in 
avarice, power, and lust. No sinner in all the Bible ever 
arrayed his wicked passions in such a cloak of holiness. It 
was left for preachers and professors of the Gospel in this 
free and Christian America, in this nineteenth century after 
the coming of Christ, to weave such a garment of sanctity 
for the body of their death. How will He whom they thus 
mock, put them to open shame for this profanity of His name 
and claims. Better defy Him in word, as they do in act, 
than to thus proclaim that in their most godless deeds they 
are especially observing His most godly law. 

Thus was it left for Satan, in his last resort, to transform 
himself into an angel of light, and enter this Paradise, 
which the Bible and Christian institutions were making the 
garden of the Lord, and by the deft handling of the "Word. 
of God, seduce His Church to her ruin. As he showed his 
skill in selecting apt texts of Scripture with Avhich to assail 
our Lord and Savior, so has he tempted His disciples — alas ! 
in their case, with a too baleful success. 

II. But another root this iniquity puts forth. It is claimed 
that this mark of color is a badge of separation and of 
degradation ; that, because they are black, they are without 
equal rights, and cannot mingle indissolubly with the rest 
of mankind. Their white neighbors shrink from them with 
horror. A leper is not so offensive. 

This* sin of caste prevails here as much as where it has 
borne its legitimate fruit — the transforming of this sep- 
arated, darker, and inferior class into the property of the 
lighter and superior. 

To its consideration we of the North are especially called. 
It is a sin at our own doors, in our own hearts. It makes 
us naked before our enemies. It ties our tongues before 
their taunts. It must be extirpated ere God gives us per- 
fect and perpetual peace. It is the most general, deep- 
rooted, unnatural, and destructive of all the sins of the nation. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 127 

1. Its universality none can doubt. The familiarity of 
the South, the philanthropy of the North, have not yet 
weakened this feeling-. Now and then a Richard M. Johnson 
publicly avows his tinged companion to be his wife. Here 
and there, in the North, equally fervent loves are legally 
consummated. But these are solitary stars in the midnight 
clouds of this superstition. " Darkness is over all the land." 

2. It is the most deep-rooted. I could not have men- 
tioned a subject that would have excited such instant and 
profound loathing as this. I rejoice that you have so patient- 
ly listened to its uncongenial truths. I believe that it is be- 
cause reason commands you, though your feelings yet refuse 
obedience. Let reason have her perfect work, and see if 
she cannot subdue this feeling to herself, and convert it to 
the perfect truth. 

The presence of a drop of this blood excludes its pos- 
sessor from all white society, North or South. But a few 
years since, a wealthy man in New Orleans, in a heated con- 
versation, was charged with having a colored ancestor, a 
free black, some four or five generations before. The blood 
of his antagonist was not sufficient recompense for the 
injury he suffered. He prosecuted him, and laid his dam- 
ages at twenty thousand dollars. Though the defendant 
could not prove his charge, he proved enough to throw a 
stain of doubt on his opponent, which is said to have ex- 
cluded him from the society where he had moved. It would 
have excluded him from any circle in the North. A gentle- 
man in a New England town brought an elegant and wealthy 
bride from the West Indies, who was slightly tinged with 
this hue. Her wealth, culture, and beauty could not secure 
for her admittance into a society below that in which she 
had moved at home, and she remained in seclusion till death 
admitted her to the equal company of heaven. These in- 
stances could be reproduced everywhere. It is not the 
amount, it is the fact, of African blood that puts its in- 



128 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

heritor without the pale of those who boast that they are of 
Caucasian origin. 

A Virginia court has lately refused freedom to some per- 
sons, three fourths white, saying such a precedent would 
free one tenth of the slaves in the State. We grant no real 
freedom to those who are nine hundred and ninety-nine thou- 
sandths white, if the other thousandth be of African blood. 
A young lady, at a Northern seminary, the slave daughter 
of a Southern slaveholder, was the acknowledged belle of 
the school, and so remained for many terms. On the dis- 
covery of her being slightly affected with Afric blood, she 
fell from her high estate, and only her affiance with an hon- 
orable gentleman, whom she afterwards married, prevented 
her becoming an outcast. If this prejudice works so pow- 
erfully in these extreme cases, how must it rage in the gen- 
eral feeling toward the great masses of our brethren, whose 
skin is touched with a browner hue than that which bleaches 
upon our bones ? 

3. But you will say a sentiment so deep and all-pervading 
is not prejudice ; it is nature. Is it so ? If so, our oppo- 
sition ceases. We shall not ask you to violate the laws of 
Nature. On the contrary, we affirm that it is unnatural. We 
use this word not in a moral sense, but physical. It is unnat- 
ural physically ; it is inhuman morally. It is so, because, — 

(1.) We have no such feelings toward any other class of 
men. We may dislike the Indian, but some of the greatest 
men of this nation boast of their Indian blood. Patrick 
Henry and John Randolph were honored the more from this 
circumstance. This blood is no bar to any society, employ- 
ment, or dignity. No man has been refused a pastorate or 
any office on its account. 

Yet eminent physiologists affirm that the blacks are supe- 
rior to the Indians. A grander nature, more original, more 
divine, has God conferred on them. I heard a distinguished 
naturalist of Baltimore say that this despised people was 



OF AMERICAN SLAYEEY. 129 

far superior to the Indians in all manly qualities. Every ob- 
server of the two must acknowledge it. The "poor In- 
dian,'' with all his oppressions; has been comparatively a 
petted protege of the nation.* He has been the ally of war- 
ring whites for two hundred years. Missionaries have been 
sent him from every church. Xo legal bars have been 
raised against him. Yet where is he to-day ? Running 
before the white man, or abiding among us, scarcely changed 
in dress, nabits, or disposition from his barbaric ancestors. 
Xegroes were brought here as slaves ; were kept as slaves 
everywhere for one hundred and fifty years. Most of them 
are kept in that condition until this day. Every curse and 
sneer that our souls could conceive, or tongues pronounce, 
have been thrust upon them. Yet to-day they have some 
of the most attractive orators in the country. Through both 
South and North are found negro preachers, without learning 
or culture, of such natural wit, pathos, and sublimity, as make 
the mass of their white brethren ill the ministry, before their 
brightness, pale their ineffectual fires. 

They have given the nation a style of music which has 
become more diffused and more popular than any other in 
the world. Tasso's songs are said to be sung by Venetian 
boatmen. A few ballads live by the genius of Burns in the 
glens of Scotland. Such national strains are found else- 
where, confined to the lands where they were born. But the 
songs of our enslaved brethren have taken captive the whole 
world. Bayard Taylor says that Arabian minstrels on the 
Nile sing them to their tamborines, instead of their old hum- 
drum discords. The singers of Hindostan relieve the audi- 

* This statement has been confirmed by the appointment by General 
Grant of a half breed, Colonel Parker, as the chief of his military staff, 
who also, since the war. has married a white lady of high position. 
Xot a paper, nor tongue, however hostile, has spoken a word against 
either of these. events. Why should they if he should make Frederick 
Douglass, another half breed, of far higher abilities, the chief of his 
presidential staff — his Secretary of State? 
9 



130 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

tors of ennui and money by the merry or plaintive strains 
of our favorite airs. Borne by their masters on the wings 
of commerce, these plaints and consolations are carried to 
all the world, and all the world repeats their strains. 

They are in highest honor here. Every street corner at- 
tests their popularity. Every city has its band of minstrels, 
who blacken their faces, and reproduce plantation melodies 
and manners, for the greedy delight of every class in soci- 
ety. One of the wealthiest gentlemen of New York, of the 
highest social rank, said to me, " I very much prefer to 
visit the negro minstrels than the opera." The unabated 
success of these companies — a success beyond that of 
any other class of amusements — shows its deep and exten- 
sive popularity. It has made those rich who can catch these 
wild wails of our national captives, and fashion them into 
songs. If these composers invent melodies, and give -them 
this dialect, they still keep close to the character they as- 
sume, and make both words and tones sound forth the depths 
of breaking hearts. Few more pathetic pieces are in all 
musical literature than "Lucy Neal," " Uncle Ned," "Old 
Folks at Home," or " Carry Me back to Old Yirginny." 
How wonderfully does this experience of our slaves agree 
with that of their Hebrew brethren by the side of the rivers 
of Babylon ! " They that wasted us required of us a song." 
God grant that, like these their ancient brethren, their wait- 
ings may soon become rejoicings over their own liberty, in 
their own homes, free and happy forever. 

Not in music alone do they attain national eminence, and 
even preeminence. In courtesy of manners they have no 
equals among our whiter populations. They are oar truest 
gentlemen, in that quiet good breeding that knows what 
perfect courtesy requires. Not the crouching servility that 
the slave-master requires and receives, bat the unconscious 
adaptation to the requisites of the street, or the parlor, 
which forms the law of good society, this they instinctively 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 131 

exhibit. Compare the manners of our African and Indian 
brethren. The latter are stiff, ungainly, feeling ill at ease, 
in house or city. The former slide instinctively into the best 
postures, looks, and actions, putting every one at ease in 
their own unconscious propriety. 

In the culinary art they have no rivals. The French alone 
equal them in both these graces. Xo Anglo-Saxon touches 
by hard study that deft handling of the mysteries of the 
kitchen which his negro servant and slave attains by a sort 
of instinct. They will frequently introduce new dishes — 
a thing as rare in an ordinary housewife as the creation of 
a new world ; and when asked where they learned these felici- 
tous combinations, they reply, " Out of my own head." 
Xo cook-book helps them ; for they cannot read. They 
make new dishes, as a Lowell or Browning makes new rhymes, 
or Mozart new melodies, by sheer instinct of genius.* 

In other gifts they excel. In aptness of imitation, in wit 
and humor, in patience and sunniness of temper, f in fidelity 
and integrity, they are of the highest rank. Duplicity they 
have been trained in by the conduct of their oppressors ; 
and this sin hangs to too large a degree around those who 
are relieved from its immediate temptation. In their ready 
reception of the Gospel in all its simple truth and hearti- 
ness, they are without an equal. 

Such are the gifts and graces of those millions of our 
brethren whose oneness with us we declare to be most un- 
natural. Compare their character with those of other trans- 
Atlantic races, and then compare our feeling toward each. 



* " Cooking is an indigenous talent of the African race." 

"Now, there's Dinah gets you a capital dinner, — soup, ragout, roast 

fowl, dessert, ice-creams, and all, — and she creates it all out of chaos 

and old night."— Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

f I never saw a negro angry, nor heard a word of profanity from his 

lips. Undoubtedly they fall into these sins. But their indulgence in 

them is most rare in comparison with that of their whiter brethren. 



132 CASTE THE CORNER-STOXE 

We profess no such aversion to the Asiatic tribes, or the 
Polynesian, or the various branches of the European family. 
A cultivated member of any of these families of men might 
move with perfect freedom in any of our circles.* Why 
should we so vehemently declare a prejudice to be founded 
in nature which puts a class far superior to many of these 
without the pale of humanity ? 

What is there, then, we solemnly ask, in view of these 
facts, in this portion of the human family, that justifies the 
idea so powerful in this and every American community, that 
they are, by divine decree, set forever apart and below the 
rest of mankind 7 Are they the children of Cain, bearing his 
mark on their foreheads ? Much rather are their haughty op- 
pressors his offspring. Theirs is the faith and fate of Abel. 

(2.) On what do we base our dogma of necessary segre- 
gation ? On color? What degree of color is requisite to 
enslave or liberate a man ? Where is the Mason and Dixon's 
line among pigments, — on one side of which a man is changed 
from a brother to a beast, and crossing which, — if he can cross 
it, as many do, — transforms a beast into a brother ? Where 
run the boundaries that put a son of Adam, of Noah, of 
God, among another order of beings than the rest of his 
brethren ? Will not this border line, in its course, enter 
the families of proud-blooded Caucasians, and set husband 
against wife, father against daughter, brother against sister ? 
Does it not to-day, in many a household in this land, make 
one half of the family the property of the other ? f Will 
not this law go yet further, and give the lightest complex- 
ioned race dominion over their darker kindred ? Cannot 



* This was confirmed by the visit to America of the Queen of the 
Sandwich Islands, in 1864, as well as that of Japanese and Chinese em- 
bassadors. All of these were received freely into our best society, and 
all of them were far less attractive in contour of face, or even complex- 
ion, as well as in manners, than the better class of Afric- Americans. 

t See Note VI. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 133 

England quote this plea as the conclusive argument for its 
subjugation of Ireland, the yellow-haired Saxon being the 
natural superior of the dark-skined Celt ? How like an 
unsubstantial shadow, as it is, does this fantasy fade into 
nothingness before the clear and sober light of reason ! 

But say you, "Other physical features — the contour of 
face, or head, or foot, some real or fancied divergence from 
the Caucasian model — are proofs that God never designed 
we should live as one family on the closest and most sacred 
terms of intimacy." How do you know they are proofs ? 
Is there a suggestion in the Word of God, is there an im- 
pulse in the universal heart, is there an instinctive abhorrence, 
mutual and potent, as it must be, if it is an instinct, in 
regions where both classes abound. We all know that 
these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative. The 
Bible teaches no such doctrine. The conscience utters no 
such decree. The world has recognized no such law. Ethi- 
opia swayed the world from Memphis. Ham ruled all man- 
kind from Nineveh and Phoenicia and Carthage.* The loves of 
the Shemite iEneas and the Hamite Dido (for the Phoenicians 
were of Ham's family) were celebrated by the daintiest scholar 
of imperial Rome, the Japhethite Virgil. Black Ethiopians 
held generalships in Roman armies, professorships in Greek 
schools, and bishoprics in Christian churches. Men with 
all their physical peculiarities founded empires, and the 
blood of Europe's nobility and royalty, your own blood, if 
traced far enough, may be found to possess this direful drop 
of tainted color. 

(3.) If no physical reason can be given for this deep-rooted 
prejudice, the argument in its favor is still more fallacious, 
when we look at the real nature of humanity. The soul's 
dress is the body — dress like that the body itself wears, 
of all shades, from black to white, and all shades alike 

* See article in the Methodist Quarterly, for January, 1869, entitled 
" The Negro in History ; " written by Professor Blyden, of Liberia Col- 
lege, a gentleman of pure African origin. 



134 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

agreeable and comely. It is a dress in which God, and 
not our own vanity, has arrayed our spirits, and therefore, 
so far from being a ground of repulsion, it ought not to offer 
any barrier to the perfect communion of those it clothes. 
Are there natural, vital, eternal distinctions in the spiritual 
being of man ? All confess there are none. When we meet 
these outcasts at the table of the Lord, when we hear their 
experiences of Christ in all these highest exercises of the 
mind and heart, there is no knowledge of black or white. 
All are one in Christ Jesus. 

(4.) But again you will say, " If this is not unnatural, 
why does it so powerfully possess the national heart ? " I 
answer, Because of their social condition. Two things chiefly 
create this prejudice among nations — religion and social 
condition. Religion may breed caste. You do not abhor the 
black to-day any more than the Christian of the middle 
ages abhorred the Jew, or than the Jew in earlier ages 
abhorred the Christian. Neither would have treated the 
other, when he was in the supremacy, with any more re- 
spect than a Southern white man now treats his colored 
brother. Each would have felt the heaviest curse resting 
upon him, had he admitted his religious antagonist to his 
table or his bed. Thus, too, the Mohammedan, in the days 
of his power, and where he still holds undisputed sway, 
treats his Christian brother. "Dog" and "infidel" are 
his best compliments, death his best hospitality. Thus, in 
India, religion builds its mighty walls between the same 
blood. Men whom you cannot distinguish apart in com- 
plexion, or any feature, are separated by a gulf which it is 
death, and worse, to attempt to span. 

Social condition breeds the same feeling. The English 
Norman would have felt unutterable disgust had his Saxon 
neighbor claimed social equality and intimacy. To this day 
the English noble, or even gentleman, would profess that he 
had a " natural " aversion to the serf, though of one parent- 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 135 

age a few generations back. So a rich, especially if an old, 
family among us feels toward its poor neighbor, though 
equally old and as truly honorable. The members of it may 
meet in the same party, and attend the same church, but 
for the rich man to invite his poorer brother to his table, for 
his family to associate with his neighbors on perfect equality, 
is a grace far above their attainment. 

Their social status has wrought this prejudice in us. It 
is the lowest any class can occupy toward their fellows. 
They are slaves. And as the Egyptians loathed the Jews, 
their whiter neighbors, because they were their slaves, as 
Greeks and Romans shrunk from fraternal communion with 
their slaves, though of their own blood, so Ave have allowed 
this condition to work in us its baleful power. They are 
slaves, bought and sold. We are free. The separation is 
immeasurable. 

Of course, if those who are in slavery have a difference 
of appearance added to their condition, we should very 
reaclil}^ defend ourselves on the plea that this appearance 
was the cause of slavery, and that thus we were separated, 
not b}^ condition only, but by nature. And from this we 
should easily conclude that they were by race necessarily 
removed from us, and there could be no community of inter- 
est, or friendship, or life. 

Hence arises American caste. The slave is black. The 
free are white. If the slave is black, then the black man 
is, and of right ought to be, a slave. If the black man ought 
to be a slave, and the white man free, then there is a vital, 
natural and eternal distinction between them — a great gulf 
fixed by God. 

Thus the diabolic argument is framed, and our consciences 
seared as with a hot iron. Slavery alone has caused this 
creed ; its abolition, as all history attests, will cause its 
destruction. 

(5.) Another proof that this aversion is unnatural is, that 



136 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

it is largely confined to countries where the black man is a 
slave. No strong prejudice exists in Europe. Queen Victoria, 
at the marriage of her eldest daughter, placed in a promi- 
nent position among her retinue a black lady, a princess 
from Africa. A black man sits in the legislative chamber 
of France. Students of this color are in the English univer- 
sities, and in the society of Propaganda at Rome. Dumas, 
the most popular of French writers, is the grandson of a 
negro, and possesses marked African features. Fugitives 
from our shores melt into the current of European society 
as easily as their whiter brethren.* 

If it is a natural sentiment, it must be universal. It 
must exist outside of the region that is cursed with a sys- 
tem which, in its living presence, or in its almost equalfv 
powerful memories, has wrought within us these convic- 
tions. As it has no such existence, it is contrary to nature. 

(6.) Finally, we declare this prejudice unnatural because 
it is contrary to the Scriptures. The Scriptures never 
speak disrespectfully of the black race. "lam black, but 
comely/' says Christ of Himself, in the Canticles. It says, 
" Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" — not because it is 
desirable, but because it is impossible. If you claim that a 
change is desired here, then it is also in the parallel passage, 
"or the leopard his spots." But as the skin of the leopard 
is the handsomest that clothes any animal, it may be in- 
tended to affirm that the skin of the Ethiopian is the hand- 
somest of all human cuticles. The parallelism of the He- 
brew writers would approve that conclusion. 

* Later events multiply these instances. The most celebrated drag- 
oman I met in Alexandria was as black a Nubian as was ever sold in 
Richmond, and far blacker than most of that property. Yet all rivals 
gave way to him as being far more accomplished, as well as more 
capable. Rev. Dr. Bellows commends, in his late Travels in the East, 
the beauty of the blacks of Cairo. Colored gentlemen's daughters, in 
Paris, are sued by white lovers as flatteringly and as earnestly as other 
ladies of wealth and position. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 137 

It finds no place in all Bible history. Solomon treated 
the Queen of Sheba, a negress of Abyssinia, with the ut- 
most respect and cordiality ; Philip ran reverently by the 
side of the chariot of a negro, the chief minister of the 
court of her successor; Moses married an Ethiopian; a 
negro was called of God and his brethren to be one of 
"the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch," 
with Barnabas and the foster-brother of Herod, and was 
also called by the Holy Ghost to lay his hands, in company 
with those of his brethren, upon the heads of Paul and Bar- 
nabas — the first Christian ordination that is upon record, and 
one that our ministers would do well speedily to imitate. 

More than this : the Bible constantly proclaims the abso- 
lute oneness of the race of man, in Adam, Noah, and Christ. 
Against this divine rock every wave of infidelity beats to- 
day, and beats in vain. Let the church, let every Chris- 
tian, beware how they aid this assault of false science by 
a more false humanity. Cling to the central doctrine of the 
Word of God — one man, one Savior, one God. Whatever 
opposes or rejects this truth, reject and oppose it. Pluck out 
your right eye, if it sees, or professes to see, any separation 
among the children of men. Cut off your right hand, if it 
strikes down your brother because the same blood, and of 
the same color as your own, puts on a darker hue, but not 
unlovelier as it appears upon his countenance, than upon 
your own. 

Thus falls the plea that this sin is according to nature. 
It was never heard of till within less than two hundred 
years, and then only within our territorial limits. It will 
never be heard of two hundred years hence ; and in far less 
time than that, if the iniquity out of which it flourishes shall 
disappear. TVhen slavery dies, this its child and parent, 
whose foul breast preserves its fouler life, shall fast follow 
it to its unholy grave. May God hasten to deliver the land 
from both abominations. Already is the mingling of the 



138 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

diverse complexions going forward. In the West Indies, so 
general is amalgamation that men and women of a culture 
and beauty, of a wealth and lineage, that the proudest Bos- 
tonian or Virginian would envy, boast of their mixed blood. 
The Chief Justice of Jamaica is of this origin. No reflection 
on color is allowed in any fashionable circle in that island. 
It would be a taunt at many of the gentlemen and ladies in 
the assembly. 

In Brazil, so utterly extinct is this prejudice, — if it ever 
existed, — that the black and mixed bloods are in the highest 
national offices. When Governor Wise, of Virginia, was sent 
as minister to Brazil, his wife was compelled to accept the ser- 
vice of a colored physician td escort her to the shore, whom 
she would have flogged at home for assuming such a pro- 
fession, or if he had not bowed his head, and spoken in 
the most cringing manner, with the enforced dialect of his 
brethren. 

4. The great objection to this feeling is, that it is almost 
the sole buhvark of slavery. Other systems of slavery are 
based on other pretensions. The slaves of India are held 
in that estate by the combined strength of wars and creeds : 
the ruling class having subdued the aboriginal peoples in 
war, and then bound them in the fetters of caste. Slavery 
in Russia is simpty that of noble and serf. Our slavery 
can have no such basis. Slaves are not captives of war 
waged by present masters. They are not separated in their 
religious life by form, or ceremony, or creed, although 
many attempts are made to create such distinctions. The 
glorious Gospel of the blessed God, much as it has been 
perverted and suppressed, there and here, in its teachings 
and inspirations as to the oneness of man, and especially of 
all believers, has often broken through this wall of prejudice, 
and both theoretically and practically compelled the white 
to recognize his slave as his brother. Colored churches, 
pews, galleries, and all the other high walls and huge that 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 139 

the enemy has erected in the house of God, sometimes dis- 
appear like walls of black cloud before the powerful beams 
of the Sun of Righteousness and of love. 

The only basis of this system is the , divinely ordained 
separation of the colored man from his whiter brother. Were 
they white, they could not be kept in slavery a year. 
But the South says, " They are so distinct a people that it 
is impossible for us to ever mingle together." How the 
complexion of their slaves gives the lie to this pretense ! 
" If they are so distinct a people, they cannot become one 
with us by any process. If inferior, we must be their nat- 
ural protectors ; if protectors, possessors. If they were not 
created equal, they are perpetual servants, and involuntary 
servitude is thus entailed upon them and their children for- 
ever. We will make this paternal, patriarchal, considerate 
as possible, but we cannot change fate." Thus, from our 
cruelty of soul toward our brother's face springs forth the 
horrid form of chattel slavery. We may abhor the conclu- 
sion. We consent to its basis. Only by denying the prem- 
ise, earnestly, practically, constantly, shall we escape the 
fatal snare that makes us dumb and powerless before these 
enemies of the human race and its Divine Father. 

The South could not long withstand the influence of the 
Free North, were we not thus partakers in this sin — its 
feeders and nurturers. When they observe, with all our 
abolitionism, no recognition of the unity of man ; when they 
see these, our brethren, set apart in churches and schools, 
or, if allowed to enter our churches, driven into the lowest 
seats ; when they behold every avenue of honorable effort 
shut against them, — that no clerk of this complexion is 
endured in our stores, no apprentice in our workshops, no 
teacher in our schools, no physician at our sick-beds, no 
minister in our pulpits, — how can we reproach them for 
their sins, or urge them to repentance ? Where is there a 
colored family dwelling in perfect intimacy with its neigh- 



140 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

bors ? Where is there a friendly party in which they appear 
as welcome and equal guests ? Where is the neighborhood, 
we might almost ask, the person, who communes with this 
brother, heart in heart, neither noticing nor thinking of the 
difference of complexion ? How deep, how wide-spreading, 
how exceeding bitter, are these roots of bitterness ! 

Till this iniquity is done away, we are verily guilty con- 
cerning our brother. We are speechless before Southern 
effrontery and sophistry. We are approving and acting 
upon the very ideas they faithfully carry out in their laws, 
their customs, their " domestic institution." When our 
churches are not based on the practical disunity of the race, 
when our workshops, our stores, our juries, our halls of 
legislation, our family relations, give no evidence of the 
existence of this iniquity in our hearts or lives, then we 
can say to our Southern brethren, " Go thou and do like- 
wise." When Frederic Douglass stands in Congress, with 
other members, and above them, as he will stand when he 
arrives there ; when Charles Remond can move' in the circle 
to which his wealth and culture give him the passport ; when 
Dr. Pennington is settled over a congregation of faithful wor- 
shipers of every hue and one heart ; when we see our col- 
ored brethren moving around our conference appointments 
with no more thought of their color than there is of those who 
now occupy them ;. when these things are witnessed among 
us, we shall no longer need to entertain this topic as a 
subject of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Till then, we 
must humble ourselves, and pray earnestly for our deliver- 
ance from the chains of a bondage so inhuman and ungodly. 

But you may say, " My prejudice has nothing to do with 
this iniquity. Can there not be equality without fraternity ? " 
Certainly, but not without capacity for fraternity, if the 
necessary conditions are fulfilled. For instance : A rich 
democrat may grant that his poor political brother is his es- 
sential equal, and yet not fraternize with him. But if he 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 141 

says that brother's hair, or eyes, or contour, or complexion, 
is such, that if every other disability were removed, — pov- 
erty, ignorance, and rudeness, — he could not, nor could his 
family, for a thousand generations, be his real companion and 
brother, — such a democrat could never believe in the real 
equality of his poorer kinsman with himself. So, if we say 
the colored m'an is our equal, but we will never fraternize 
with him ; never invite him to our houses and tables ; never 
give him a seat in our pulpits or pews ; never have him as 
our teacher or pupil, as our apprentice or master-workman, 
— all our talk about equality, without fraternity, is a mock- 
ery and a lie. 

Hence it is that the great majority of those who go 
South, not having wrought into them this sense of his per- 
fect equality with us in all the essentials of manhood, but 
looking on him as of an outcast race, are powerless before 
the sophistries of the slavocrat, and soon concede that the 
system is necessary in order to their existence, while it is 
necessary solely because of this wicked feeling that pervades 
the whole land. 

Thus, my friends, we have carefully and honestly exam- 
ined this feeling of aversion to our colored brethren, as of 
one blood and destiny with ourselves, in the light of his- 
tory, of reason, of the general sentiment of mankind, of 
the Scriptures, and of the strength which it gives to the 
system of Slavery. All of them condemn it. Notwithstand- 
ing its depth and universality with us, it is unnatural and 
inhuman. It is the great author and sustainer of slavery, 
its chief corner-stone, and the cement of its walls. It must 
die before this great crime fully ends. 

In the divine condemnation, are we not ourselves in- 
cluded ? We, so active in political strife for Northern su- 
premacy, so furious against Southern aggression — "We 
are verily guilty concerning our brother." We refuse 
to call him our brother in our heart and in our life. 



142 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

We treat him far worse than the children of Jacob did 
their brother, and must yet, for this conduct, meet, as did 
they, the judgments of a just and angry God. 

III. What is the cure of Slavery ? Not Kansas ; not presi- 
dential triumphs ; not reversals of the infamous decisions of a 
packed and slavish court ; not the removal of wicked judges 
from the seat they have stained with their shameful edicts ; 
not the complete triumph of Anti-slavery in all the National 
Councils, so that Freedom shall be national, as it now is sec- 
tional. None of these things will completely extinguish 
this horror of sin. Four millions of persons will yet be held 
in profitable, in unspeakable, bondage. The wealth, and fash- 
ion, and refinement of the slaveholder will control the whole 
land as it does to-day ; for Charleston and Richmond give 
tone to the fashion of the nation. Fifth Avenue and Beacon 
Street submit to their sway as easily as the rich manufac- 
turers and merchants of England follow the style set by their 
nobility ; as easily as our new rich men imitate, as far as 
possible, the style of those who have grown up amid the 
refinements of wealth and luxury. We shall still hate and 
despise those who have an} r drops of African blood in their 
veins. We must do these first duties in politics, and in the 
Church, but we must not leave the great duty undone. We 
must extirpate this prejudice from our hearts. We must 
set the reason, the conscience, against this sentiment, and 
work all their power till it is completely obliterated. 

But you may ask, Flow shall I begin the cure ? 

1. By resolving to think no more of the color of the skin 
than you do of the eyes, and to like its color, as you do 
that of the eyes. Look at the heart, at the divine likeness 
there, and let your feelings be excited only by sympathy 
with its virtues. 

2. You must be willing to welcome them to your house 
and table, if they are worthy of such a welcome. You 
must give them this hospitality, if they have been prevented 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 143 

by the prejudices of society from attaining that style of 
manners which you see they are capable of reaching- under 
proper encouragement. I do not say that every one pos- 
sessing this blood should be thus treated. Our tastes differ 
in our friendships as in our food. Only those whose native 
traits resemble yours, or such as are agreeable to you, 
are you under obligation to admit to this intimacy. But 
you must not let your unnatural aversion keep you from 
doing this social duty. You must admit them, if other- 
wise agreeable, to all these rights and privileges. You will 
find them among the most charming of all the guests of your 
family. They -will prove the shining lights of your table. 

But last Sabbath, I had the pleasure of introducing a 
brother minister — a fugitive slave — to the table where I 
was a guest ; and, though many others surrounded that 
table, none surpassed or equaled him in giving animation 
to the hour. Among the many who honor my house and 
table with their presence, none have more refinement, orig- 
inality of thought and language, rich and playful natures, 
and none give more elevation to the societ}^ in piety 
or in talents, than some of these despised men and women 
You lose some of the best opportunities to enliven and 
improve your social life by refusing these kindred spirits 
an equal place at your board. If you could have the 
humor of an Irving, the wit of a Holmes, or the re- 
finement of an Everett, to adorn your table, you would 
feel that you were exalted by their presence. I know of 
some of these so-called repulsive men and women whose wit 
is as brilliant as Mrs. Stowe's, whose manners are as refined 
as Everett's, whose conversation is a perfect mine of genial 
sportfulness and clear-headed wisdom.* 

3. You must go further than this. They have a right, and 
ought to be encouraged, to enter the various paths of indus- 

* Among these visitors was one since famous in all the land — Sojourn- 
er Truth. She is an admirable guest, full of genius and of grace. 



144 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

try and enterprise. "Where is the colored clerk, the colored 
apprentice, the colored foreman, or physician, or preacher, 
that practices his vocation among his whiter brethren ? True, 
these men are found, but only among and for those of their 
own color. You can find them in Brattle Street, and be- 
hind the West End aristocracy of Boston, like the kitchen 
behind and below the parlor ; but that is no better, nor as 
good, a position as their free brothers hold in the South. 
You must give them a chance to develop their talents. The 
ablest salesman in a large wholesale house, in a city where 
I once resided, was a colored, man ; but he was only allowed 
the name and salary of a porter, notwithstanding his ac- 
knowledged capacity. We should put the smart and intel- 
ligent colored boy or girl into just as good stations, and 
open before them just as good opportunities, as their white 
playmates have. In one of the outer schools of Northamp- 
ton I saw a very handsome colored lad. He surpassed ail 
his schoolmates in every attraction, and, had he had equal 
chances, would have surj)assed them in the struggles of 
manhood. But his superiority ended there. They could 
go to the town, to Boston, to Xew York, and, by force of 
character and favorable circumstances, could rise to wealth 
and social power. The majority of the present rulers of 
this region were poor back country children. Had their 
dusky playmates had equal chances, they would hold now 
equal, if not superior, positions. We have a poor shoe- 
maker leading our State at Washington ; a poor mill-boy 
and machinist leading it at home. If these men had had the 
least drop of Afric's blood, with all their present abilities, — 
yea, with vastly greater abilities, — they would never have 
been allowed to be even a poor shoemaker or mill-boy. 
These offices are too high for the colored man. 

We curse them with a bitterer curse than any proud em- 
pire of Europe lays on its lowest population. England's 
nobles, in not a few instances, are children of the lowest 



OF AMEBIC AN SLAVERY. 145 

class. Sir Robert Peel's grandfather was a poor hireling ; 
Napoleon's counselors and generals, and Austria's greatest 
chieftain, — Radetzky, — were from the lowest class. 
Slaves born, and still held as slaves, are among the first 
officers of Russia ; men who pay twenty thousand dollars 
a year to their owners as a rent for themselves, and grow 
rich with that deduction from their income. But with us, 
if a colored man becomes rich, it is in a low or contraband 
way, and his riches give him no ingress to society, which 
his talents and accomplishments merit and demand. 

The South is superior to us in this matter of prejudice, 
for the same reason that the Tories of England are more lib- 
eral in their treatment of their ignoble associates than their 
rivals, because, though they make a Jew their parliamentary 
leader, there is yet a great gulf betwixt him and the nobility. 
So the slaveholder, despising all labor, can make his slave 
his overseer or master workman. The Northern workman, 
living by labor, is foolishly sensitive lest the South should 
make him one with the black, if he admitted the black to 
be one with him. These things ought not so to be. Let 
them enter not above, but according to their ability ; let the 
simple take the simple's place, the able, the able's. 

IV. But you will say this social, business, and political 
equality may lead to another, the very thought of which is 
insufferable. My friends, all I have said is, I am aware, very 
unpalatable to you. It would be insufferable if spoken two 
hundred miles south of us. It could not have been spoken 
below Washington, nor there save by one protected by the 
State whom he represents. We must not fear to declare 
the whole counsel of God in this matter. The question that 
has been uppermost in your hearts in all this discourse, 
that will leap from your lips as soon as their enforced silence 
is broken, let us briefly and calmly consider. When Gov- 
ernor Banks, by whose authority we meet to-day,* was asked 

* At Roxbury, 1856. 
10 



146 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

by the Southern catechist, when he was a candidate for the 
Speaker's chair, in order to cover him with infamy, whether 
he believed in amalgamation, with a promptness, indepen- 
dence, and courage, that but few ministers of the Gospel, 
and fewer of any other class, would have exhibited, he an- 
swered, that " the more powerful race would absorb the 
weaker, and it was an undecided question of physiology yet, 
which was the stronger." So, when you ask us if we believe 
in the intermarriage of the races, we answer, True mar- 
riage is a divine institution. Such hearts are knit together 
by the hand that originally wove them in separate but half- 
finished webs. God makes this unity. If He does not, 
then it is a conventional, human thing, subject to the whims 
of human society. As it respects such marriage, all I need 
to say is, "It is none of our business. It is the business of 
the two souls that are thus made one by the goodness and 
greatness of their Creator." Parents have advisory power 
to a certain extent. If it is not of God, but only of tran- 
sient passion, of pride, of ambition, of desire for wealth, 
then parents may have complete, or nearly complete, control 
until their children have attained a legal age. But if heart 
is one with heart, then with Shakspeare must you sa}^, — 

" Let me not to the marriage of true souls 
Admit impediment." 

That greatest of poets and thinkers carries this principle to 
its full expression in the marriage of the most womanly of 
his women and the most manly of his men. He sets the 
loves of Desdemona and Othello far above the range of 
groveling criticism. The 'whole story of that event seems 
to have been made for our land and hour. It is a protest 
against this curse such as no subsequent poet in all litera- 
ture has ever attained. Read it and see the feelings of 
the American heart painted and denounced by this master 
of human nature. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 147 

Desdemona's father, a rich and proud Venetian, full of the 
spirit of caste, like many such a father in this nation to-day, 
when he learned of his daughter's secret marriage, cries out 
thus against her distinguished and noble husband : — 

" thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed ray daughter? 
Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her ; 
For I'll refer me to all things of sense, 
If she in chains of magic were not bound, 
Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, 
So opposite to marriage, that she shunned 
The wealthy curled darlings of her nation, 
Would ever have to incur the general mock, 
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom 
Of such a thing as thou ! " 

In his unrestrained rage he again bursts out : — > 

"That she, in spite of nature, 
Of years, of country, credit, everything, 
To fall in love with what she feared to look on ! 
It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect 
That will confess perfection so could err 
Against all rules of nature, and must be driven 
To find out practices of cunning hell 
Why this should be." 

To this storming American, Othello before the Duke 
makes reply — a reply so dignified, so manly, so majestic in 
rhythm and in feeling, that it seems as if Shakspeare felt 
that he was pleading for God and humanity against the 
contemptible prejudices of this age and nation. The great 
Duke, at the close of Othello's speeeh, says truly, as you 
and every one unprejudiced would have said, — 

" I think this tale would win my daughter too." 

Even Brabantio, her father, softens in his prejudices, and 
declares, — 

If she confess that she was half the wooer, 
Destruction on my head, if my bad blame 
Light on the man." 



148 CASTE THE CORNER-STOXE 

And after Desdemona's frank acknowledgment of her 
love, he generously gives her to him "with all his heart" 
— an example many a now wrathful father among us will 
yet faithfully follow. 

In all cases of true affection, this higher law than man's 
must have sway. If God makes such marriages between 
the white and the colored, who art thou that refusest to 
bless His bands ? Such marriages, Heaven-made and blessed, 
have occurred. In Jamaica, in Brazil, in Mexico, happy 
souls, whose outward hue is varied, whose inward blood 
arises from remote fountains, are made one in a perfect mar- 
riage. In our own land it is already no uncommon thing. 

The necessities of the heart demand it. The loveliest 
maidens of the South are often of mixed blood. A pure 
and noble man will seek a pure and noble mate, and he is 
more apt to find her in that class than any other, for the 
pride and bitterness of the white and slaveholding women 
do not defile her soul. Society lays its heavy hand on his 
affections and crushes them. It lays its hellish laws on her, 
and despoils her of her virtue, so far as she can lose it, 
against every remonstrance of her whole nature. Here and 
there a rich man rises superior to society, and abides hon- 
orably to his love and vows, though no minister will conse- 
crate them. Said a clergyman to Mrs. Johnson, the God- 
given wife of Vice-President Eichard M. Johnson, " You 
cannot join the Church, because you have not been married.'' 
She told her husband what had been said to her. He re- 
plied, "Tell your minister, my dear, that I am read}', and 
always have been, to be publicly married, and ask him to 
come and marry us this very night." The clergyman dared 
not do his duty, even at the request of one so high in station. 
Thus he kept a Christian woman from the Church for a sin 
which he and his Church fastened upon her. No wonder 
that her husband, in his official career, hurled indignant 
epithets at the Church, and died without its pale. Many a 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 149 

man, were this curse removed, would follow his honorable 
instincts, and rejoice in the wife of his love and youth, 
proud of the very charms her tropical blood has given her. 
When slavery dies, this prejudice will die. There will be 
no more objection to this blood, if its possessor is attrac- 
tive, than the long- bigoted New Englander or Englishman 
objects to his heart's love, though every drop of her blood 
flows from foreign fountains. The grand ladies of the South 
will yet be the mixed bloods of that region, and many a 
white, fastidious, and wealthy Solomon will solicit the 
duskier, yet none the less loving and lovely daughter of 
Pharaoh, to give his house her perpetual blessing. 

I have spoken, my friends, with great plainness of speech, 
my honest, and earnest, and long-held convictions on this 
subject. I believe that caste is the great sin of this nation, 
and that it is the great duty of every one to extirpate it first 
from himself, and then from every heart which he can influ- 
ence. The reform must begin here. I rejoice that it has 
begun. We have abolished from the statute books laws 
forbidding intermarriage, creating separate schools, and de- 
priving them of the right of suffrage and office. In the eye 
of the law they are equal ; but the Gospel must effect 
" what the law cannot do, in that it is weak through the 
flesh. " It must work its perfect work. We must feel the 
brotherhood of man. We must sympathize with the most 
oppressed of the human family. 

The African has been despised and rejected of men, for 
the same reason that woman has been. Not because of lack 
of talent, but excess of a submissive, peaceful, religious 
spirit. Had he been as bloodthirsty as the Indian, he would 
have been as free. His elements are needed to make the 
perfect man. He is the John of the Apostles, milder than 
the rest, yet superior to all of them in many of the highest 
traits of soul. 

We may justly lament the aggressions of the slave power. 



150 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 

We may be surprised at their open robbery from the North 
of its acquired and conceded territories. We may be horror- 
struck at the sight of president, cabinet, and grave sena- 
tors, hastening to break obligations as solemn and reverend 
as oaths at the marriage altar, or on the bed of death. We 
may lift our voice against these crimes. We may struggle 
manfully to repel this invading abomination. But we cannot 
expect, we shall never see, the complete removal of this curse 
from our land until we stand boldly and heartily upon the 
divine foundation — the perfect unity of the human race.* 

In dragging up our brother from this horrible pit of mire and 
clay, — this bottomless pit of death and despair, — into which 
we have cast him, we shall find ourselves compelled to move 
higher and higher in our apprehension and adoption of the 
principle and obligations of human brotherhood. We can- 
not, by a cord coiled around our feet, raise him up so that he 
shall stand where we stand, and no higher ; but we must 
take him in our arms, and bear him with us, on and up into 
all the light and liberty with which God shall crown our 
path. Till then shall the nations hear of our shame. Till 
then our cry shall fill all lands. Till then shall, as now, the 
mighty man stumble against the mighty, and both fall to- 
gether. 

Let us not turn from this truth with loathing-. Let us look 
our cruelties in the face. Let us look our duties in the face. 
Let us look stern facts in the face. Over four millions of 
this people are here. What are you going to do with them? 
Send them to Africa ? If they should agree to go, and 
great ocean steamers carried them all there, it would take 
eight thousand such steamers, or that number of voyages, to 

* The whole course of the war, and of reconstruction since, is the 
comment on this declaration. Only as we advanced to these truths did 
our cause prosper, and only when we " boldly and heartily" embraced 
them did we triumph. The completion of this work and success yet await 
the Church and society. 



OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 151 

transport them. They will never leave us nor forsake us. 
A handful may go, as a few of us go to California; but the 
millions will stay. Even if colonization could be carried out, 
it would not cure the evil. It would intensify it. If every 
son and daughter of Africa, however far removed by Anglo- 
Saxon intermixture from their original blood, were removed 
to those shores, it would only make the feeling more bitter. 
The unnatural doctrine of natural distinctions would be sus- 
tained, and Christianity would have no perfect sway in the 
earth. They must abide with us till we acknowledge by 
word and act that they are one with us. And when we con- 
fess and embrace them as brothers, we shall never listen to 
their expatriation. The idea will be as abhorrent as the 
expulsion of your own children from your arms, or your wife 
from your bosom. God will keep them with us till He has 
cured us of our sins. Then shall we rejoice to abide with 
them always, and to build up a grand nationality of one hu- 
manity, of one language, having one Eedeemer, and one 
future on earth, and, if in Christ, forever. 

Do you still ask, What shall we do ? You can do but one 
thing — your duty — as Christians, as men. Be honest, be 
honorable, feel yourselves one with these children of your 
earthly and heavenly Father. Follow Christ, and He will 
guide and bless you. 

Thus shall you cure the sin of sins that so fearfully pos- 
sesses our nation. Thus will love subdue hate, and the 
slaveholder, beholding your conquest over your prejudices, 
will approve your course, and vie with you in giving his 
slave that which is just and equal. Then shall we stand 
forth before the world, a nation where civil and social 
equality and fraternity, where the humanity of man, is the 
passport to every station. 

Purge yourself of this old leaven, as Paul had to purg^e 
himself of his prejudice against the Gentiles, as the Athe- 
nians had to purge themselves of their disgust at his procla- 



152 CASTE THE CORXER-STOXE. 

mation that God made of one blood all nations of men, — 
Greek and Barbarian, Scythian and Jew, — a proposition 
offensive beyond conception to those cultivated and contract- 
ed spirits. Let us each see that we are without sin con- 
cerning our brother. Labor to make others equally free 
from prejudice, and equally ready to build up on the solid 
foundations of the Oneness of Man such a power as shall 
strengthen every part of the army of freedom, and shall melt 
the hearts of those who hold our brethren in bondage. Then 
shall the cloud, surcharged with thunder and fire, that is set- 
tling down over those Southern plains, be lifted, and peaceful 
Emancipation shall be proclaimed, with its growing train of 
unspeakable blessings, throughout all the land, to all the 
inhabitants thereof. 

Such is our duty. It is enough for us to know it. As 
said the Iron Duke to his clerical inquirer, who asked if he 
ought to go as a missionary to India, "How read your or- 
ders ? " So should every soul say, What is duty ? If heart 
and flesh revolt, if the world sneers, and frowns ; if we are 
doomed to tread a solitary path with mocking sons of Belial 
assailing us, God give us grace to move onward and upward 
in the only way which will relieve our land of its curse, and 
make all nations see and acknowledge its glory. 

Thus acting, of you, and to you, a Voice from out the gol- 
den cloud of the Divine nature will sound sweet and deep 
through your humble, happy soul, — 

" Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought 
The better fight, who singly hast maintained 
Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 
And for the testimony of the truth hast borne 
Universal reproach, far worse to bear 
Than violence ; for this was all thy care, — 
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
Judged thee perverse." 




THE BEGINNING OF THE END.* 



Surely oppression jiaketh a wise man mad." — Eccl. vii. 7. 

I AM NOT MAD, MOST NOBLE pESTUS." AdS XXVL 25. 

SO I RETURNED, AND CONSIDERED ALL THE OPPRESSIONS THAT ARE 
DONE UNDER THE SUN : AND BEHOLD, THE TEARS OF SUCH AS WERE 
OPPRESSED, AND THEY HAD NO COMFORTER; AND ON THE SIDE OF 
THEIR OPPRESSORS THERE WAS POWER, BUT THEY HAD NO COMFORT- 
ER. "Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead, 

MORE THAN THE LIVING WHICH ARE YET ALIVE." Eccl. i\ r . 1, 2. 




NEW act opens in the great drama of the rights 
and destiny of humanity, which is now being per- 
formed by this nation, in the presence of an aston- 
ished world. It opens with a sound of war, a cry 
for blood. Is it the last act of the tragedy, when deaths 
are frequent ; where the innocent first fall, the wicked follow ; 
or is it but a slight interruption to the former movement, 
and without effect on that which shall come after ? Let us 
consider it in the sacred light that falls upon us from Heaven. 
Let us dwell upon it in no frivolous spirit, but in deep 
solemnity. 



* A sermon preached at Harvard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Cambridge, November 6, 1859, on the occasion of the capture at Har- 
per's Ferry of Captain John Brown and his associates. See Note VII. 

(153) 



154 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

" Things now, 
That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, 
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, 
We now present." 

Let us keep before us the great fact — the violent en- 
slavement of forty hundreds of thousands of our kindred in 
the flesh and in the Lord, in Adam and in Christ. Let us 
not forget what this system is and does ; how it thrusts its 
miscreated front athwart the path of all national and religious 
progress, breaks churches to pieces, rules and ruins great 
Christian charities ; and above, beyond all th^s, sets its 
satanic foot on man, created in the image of God, crushes 
out his freedom, his culture, his piety, his every God-given 
right and privilege. Connect with this defiant, triumphant 
on-marching institution of perdition this little act of a score 
of men, and see if, and how, such a small stone can indeed 
sink into the forehead of the mighty Goliath and smite him 
to the dust. And may God help us to speak and hear in 
all sincerity and godly fear. 

You all know the published history of the transaction. 
About twenty men, led by one before famous, now immortal, 
seized a few slaveholders, and a United States arsenal, 
delivered a few score of slaves, were taken, most of the 
number instantly killed, a few captured, their leader tried, 
condemned, and sentenced to be hanged. That is all. How 
can this, you may say, be the beginning- of the end of 
American Slavery ? A glance at the excitement it has 
created may guide you to a perception of this great fact. 

Not less than three orations upon it were published in 
the papers of last week ; every journal has abounded with 
editorials upon it; every political speech has been burdened 
with attempts to fasten it upon their opponents and ward it 
off from themselves. Within a month, ten thousand thanks- 
giving sermons will dwell upon its lessons. Every ear and 



HARPER'S FERRY. 155 

tongue, from Galveston to Eastport, is on fire for every item 
pertaining to it. Never has any single event in our annals 
so enthralled the whole nation. The court of justice in- 
stantly takes up the wondrous tale. With an astounding 
speed it connects itself with the moans of the wounded and 
bereaved, drags its bleeding prisoners to its bar, refuses all 
demands for needed and brief delay, heeds no claim of judi- 
cial impartiality, driving its deadly business at this fearful 
rate, and only breathing freely when it has pronounced over 
the doomed gray head the sentence of death. Nay, it does 
not breathe freely yet. He is in prison, and the centurion 
and his band keep watch day and night over him, lest his 
friends come and steal him away, and the last error be worse 
than the first. Whether released or hung, his influence has 
but just begun. If dead, he will speak as no dead have 
spoken in this land, since Warren fell asleep in his bloody 
shroud. If alive and in prison, to no walls will such a mul- 
titude of earnest eyes be aimed as to those that shut him in. 
If at liberty, his steps will be followed by myriads of sym- 
pathizing friends or curious foes. 

What does all this mean ? What does it portend ? Is 
it simply the excitement of politics, which periodically ebbs 
and flows ? Politicians may seek to use and abuse it ; but 
the feeling that produced it, and that it has produced, is 
vastly greater than any they can create or control. Theirs 
is but the tiny vessel, — Great Eastern though it be, — this 
is of the mighty upheaval of the ocean underneath. The 
vessel may reach its desired haven, or go down among 
the billows it has sought to ride ; the waves sweep on, 
under the laws of their Creator, to the goal He has set 
for them. Is it the ordinary excitement over a murderous 
riot ? Other riots are constantly occurring. One has tran- 
spired since this event, by which several men were killed 
and wounded, and a great, city surrendered to a lawless 
mob ; and yet a brief telegram satisfies the general hunger 
for the bloody feast. 



156 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

Why this difference ? Because the one is exceptional, 
transient, easily and palpably curable ; the other connects 
itself with the great iniquity that covers half, and darkens 
all the land. It is the first blow that gigantic power ever 
felt. It is a blow from which it cannot recover. How is 
this the case ? How can this brief, and apparently unsuc- 
cessful, act be considered as the beginning- of that long- 
praj^ed for — we can hardly say, long looked-for hour, the 
death of Slavery ? For two reasons : — 

I. 1. It has taught the slaveholders their weakness. Never 
has such trembling shaken their knees before. Never has 
such a thrill of horror made so many great States to quake. 
Over fifteen States, over a million of square miles, there has 
run one feeling, one fear, one Belshazzar sense of awful 
guilt, and awful weakness, and awful punishment. That 
handwriting on the wall of the great Southern palace of 
pleasure needed no slave prophet, like Daniel, to interpret it. 
They understood its meaning ; they feared its instant accom- 
plishment. Their action, or want of action, in this conflict, 
has placed them before the world as totally incapable of 
defending themselves against any moderately well-devised 
and well-executed rising of the slaves. Had John Brown 
been half as successful as he anticipated, had but five hun- 
dred slaves joined him there, he could have marched to New 
Orleans, freeing all the slaves on his way, for all the slave- 
holders could' have clone to stop him. His folly appears to 
be, not in counting on the weakness of the South, but in 
neglecting to count on the strength of the Federal arm. 

Well may they tremble. They are but men — men most 
guilty, and therefore most weak. We who are so free with 
our gibes, would be palsied with equal horror and faintness, 
if we stood on the same rocking and cleaving soil, over the 
same mine which we had wickedly filled with deadly explo- 
sives, as we saw the torch approaching' it. 

" Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." 



HARPER'S FERRY. 157 

Suppose you had stolen a man's wages from his youth, had 
trampled out his manhood, beat him often and cruelly, robbed 
him of his wife and children and sold them from his arms, — 
how would you feel if you saw, or dreamed you saw, that 
man stand before you, rifle in hand, demanding his freedom? 
This is their condition. They slept but little before, they 
will sleep less now. The planters in the vicinity of the 
outbreak dare not spend the night on their plantations. They 
flee when no man pursueth. Let us not revile them. Let us 
with larger, and so tenderer, heart lament their state, while 
we call them, by these fears, to repentance. They may thus 
be led thither. The terrors of the Lord have persuaded 
multitudes of men to be holy. God surrounds all His laws 
with great punishments, so that those who will not be led 
by love may be driven by fear. May we not hope that this 
sense of helplessness, and dread of the just vengeance of 
their oppressed brethren, will persuade them to give them 
that which is just and equal ? 

Had Pharaoh hearkened to his fears, he would have eman- 
cipated his bondmen before the great wrath of God fell so 
awfully upon him. So, if these Pharaohs, who have so long 
combined against the Lord and against His children, will 
but heed these feelings of danger and powerlessness that 
their loving Creator has given them, as warnings and incen- 
tives to duty, they will instantly inaugurate the work of 
emancipation. 

Mr. Thackeray has said that Great Britain, in the Revo- 
lution, never overcame the influence of Bunker's Hill. Much 
less will the slaveholders overcome Harper's Ferry. Whether 
bloodier outbreaks follow, or more peaceful counsels prevail, 
be assured that the lessons of this hour will not be lost on 
them. They may, for a season, wear the bold face they 
have borne so long. They may still utter great swelling 
words of vanity, and defy the armies and the truths of the 
living God, but their hearts are moved out of their place ; 



158 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

there is no strength in them. The march of the cause of 
emancipation is far from being stayed by this affair. Crazy, 
and broken with age and grief, as everybody seems so 
anxious to paint the leader of this band, that they may 
defend themselves from all complicity in his plans, he has 
taught the haughty South what she cannot, dare not forget. 
His apparition will undoubtedly incite them to the work 
God will yet perforin through them, or over them. 

2. The second reason for considering this the begin- 
ning of the end of this accursed crime against God and 
man, is the confidence it will breathe into the slave. If 
England never forgot Bunker's Hill, much more America 
never did. The sight of the falling or fleeing forms of their 
arrayed oppressors, on that memorable day, never lost its 
tremendous power over their hearts. So the millions of the 
enslaved will never forget the dismay, which turned the 
hearts of their masters to water, at the first gleaming of 
the rifle, the first stern demand for Freedom. Harper's 
Ferry is the turning-point in their history. Though they 
responded but feebly, though they have maintained a most 
wonderful silence since, though they seem to be the only 
cool men in the whole country, excepting their would-be 
deliverer, still they are not feelingless, they are not thought- 
less. We sneer at them because they did not avail them- 
selves of this opportunity, at the same time that we brand 
Captain Brown with insanity for offering it to them. Wiser 
thoughts will find less fault with both parties. The slaves 
are men. As one born to that fate said, centuries ago, 
amid the applause of a vast theater of slaveholders, " I 
am a man ; nothing human is foreign from me." * They are 
but men, and, therefore, like all the white races, however 
much they may say they prefer liberty to death, they will 
want some well-grounded hope of obtaining that liberty 
before they imperil their lives. See Hungary to-day, rest- 

* Terence was a slave in Borne. 



HARPER'S FERRY. 159 

less yet warless, in the talons of Austria ; Rome, under the 
cloven hoof of the pope ; France, in the clutch of Napoleon. 
Our slave brethren are of like passions with ourselves. They 
have acted wisely ; they bide their time ; it will come. 

This great deed, as it must and ought to appear in their 
eyes, will be talked of in every cabin. The underground 
telegraph will cany the tidings where no underground rail- 
road yet runs its blessed trains of liberty. The two chief 
features of the event — the interposition of Northern white 
men for their deliverance, the ghastly fright and feebleness 
of their masters — will leave an indelible impress on their 
hearts. Their consciousness of their rights as men will 
grow mightily under the influence of the fact that those of 
the same race as their oppressors are willing to die, if need 
be, for their redemption. The consciousness of their strength 
will grow with equal rapidity, when they see thousands of 
these armed masters trembling before a dozen wounded and 
imprisoned men, and compelled, by their fears, to let a 
handful of troops, mostly foreigners, win their battles. 

You may say, Is not all this wrong ? Has the slave any 
right to demand his freedom ? We are not now defending 
theories, we are only stating facts. We are showing the 
grounds for our belief that this movement is to hasten the glad 
day of universal emancipation. Yet we do not shrink from 
answering the question. The slave lias a right to demand his 
freedom. They have a right to unite in this demand. They 
have a right to fight for it if it is refused them. It is not 
their uprising that is to be condemned — it is the resistance 
to that uprising. It is the master, throttling the slave, and 
thrusting him into a bloody grave, if he dare say, " I will 
be free ! ;; that is the great criminal before God and man ; 
not the slave, claiming to exercise his inherent and inalien- 
able rights, and resisting all who oppose him. 

Can you find fault with this, you, whose government is 
based on that great sentence wrought out in the fires of a 



160 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

fierce rebellion, " All men are created free and equal"? 
You, whose highest boast is, that you descend from revolu- 
tionary fathers, whose greatest holiday is that whereon they 
proclaimed their independence from an ancient but unjust 
power, whose whole creed, of whatever party — Democratic, 
American, or Republican — is, "All government must be 
based on the consent of the governed " ? " Who is blind, 
like my servant, or deaf, as the messenger I have sent ? " 
You do not shrink from applying your formula to Italy, to 
France, to Ireland, everywhere, save to your own coun- 
trymen, whose fathers were as valiant as "ours, in that in- 
surrection against Britain. 

But we dare not say that wicked thing, and sin against 
God. We dare not affirm that any child of Adam, any child 
of God, has not the same right to himself that we have ; and 
if he can secure it without bloodshed, has a right to take it. 
If he can obtain it only by bloodshed, it is not for us, with 
our ceaseless praises of Kossuth, and Garibaldi, and Wash- 
ington, to say him nay.* God help him to his rights without 
the shedding of a drop of human blood ! God help him to 
his rights, even if, like Israel, He shall see fit to have him 
thrust into freedom by the terror-stricken, sorrow-stricken 
masters; made so now, as then, by the Angel Jehovah, the 
Lord Jesus Christ himself. 

There will be no such redemption, for the slave has no 
thirst for revenge. Yast and numerous as are the tempta- 
tions to it, no such cry has ever leaped in his soul, much 
less from his tongue. Some there may be, of the many 
Legrees, that may have commended to their lips the chalice 
of agony they have so foully forced upon their brethren. 
But these revenges will be rare. No such design moves 
the hearts of their sympathizers. He who has gone furthest 

* Are not our eulogies, and statues, and monuments of "Washington, 
— the peculiar fashion of our time, — designed by Providence to prepare 
us to welcome that greater than Washington, who may yet arise to lead 
the oppressed race to Freedom? 



HARPER'S FERRY. 161 

in this work of neighborly love and duty, expressly and 
repeatedly denies the intention of creating- or allowing a 
bloody insurrection. " I never did intend/' he says, " mur- 
der or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite 
or incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. I 
never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged 
any idea of that kind." Let us refrain from charging these 
dead and dying men, who have sacrificed their lives for the 
freedom of a despised people, with any such imputation. 
Let us rejoice that other human agents are in this work 
beside Pharaoh and his bondmen, and that their external 
sympathies and energies will peacefully melt the iron from 
these necks. 

We have only said that, in the dread alternative of free- 
dom through blood or perpetual slavery, we have no right, 
as men or as Christians, to decide for the latter. For con- 
sider, that one quarter of a million hold four millions of 
innocent people in chains. By our American arithmetic the 
majority rules. Apply the rule here, and let it peaceably 
work itself out. If violence attend its working, ask your- 
self which is the better — the short but fierce conflict of 
sixteen men, with their one pretended owner, or the violent 
subjugation to the master of those sixteen, and their pos- 
terity. On the one hand, some masters slain, some matrons 
dishonored, some falsely rich made poor, and then liberty, 
equality, fraternity in all generations ; no chains, no whips, 
no pollution, no unconsecrated marriages of lovers, no separa- 
tion of families, no robbery of a man's labor and its rewards, 
of all chances of elevation, socially and mentally, of all the 
rights which all men respect and strive after. On the other 
hand, generations upon generations of these millions suffer- 
ing unspeakable loss, and shames, and agonies. There may 
be no war nor bloodshed, thanks to the great Northern, the 
great Christian sentiment ; but if there shall be, God has 
often blessed it, and will again. 
11 



162 THE BEGINNING OE THE END. 

II. This event will lead to a more general recognition of 
our oneness of blood and destiny with the despised race. 
The past movements of this reform have made astonishing 
changes iii the Northern feeling. The colored race to-day 
are treated with a thousand-fold more respect and fraternal 
familiarity than they were twenty years ago. Yet there 
remains much to be done. Our walls of prejudice still rise 
high between us and them. We must tear them down. We 
must cease separating them from us in our churches — per- 
petuating, under another form, the negro-pew abomination 
of our fathers. We must open the doors of our schools and 
colleges to them, not only as scholars, but as teachers, if 
they show themselves capable. We must let them enter 
our shops as apprentices, our stores as clerks, our firms as 
partners. We must open the doors of all our varied de- 
partments of human enterprise, and say to them, " Show 
yourselves capable, we will show ourselves liberal." How 
high the walls that now hem them in ! how narrow and 
poor the soil they are permitted to cultivate ! The lightest 
quadroon, no less than his darkest kindred, is confined within 
the range of one or two modes of industry, and they the 
least intelligent and remunerative. I heard a worthy lady 
say, not long since, she might allow one of this class to 
work in her kitchen ; she would revolt from letting her sew 
for her. However light in hue, however neat and nimble 
in this most womanly of accomplishments, she could not 
avail herself of it to get a living in that family. Could she 
in yours ? We must crucify this lust of pride and caste, 
if we would be the friends of Christ, if we would deal truly 
and justly with the slave and his master. 

No one act in the whole movement, thus far, can contrib- 
ute to this end what the deeds done and suffered by John 
Brown and his associates will do. That sublime speech, 
on receiving his sentence, so manly, so womanly, so full of 
generosity and frankness, full of modesty and courage, has 



HARPER'S FERRY. 163 

a few sentences that, with the deeds that accompany them, 
will be living* forces for the cleansing 1 of this nation from 
the base prejudices that now infect it. Hear him, and let his 
words work their perfect work in all your hearts : " Had I 
interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit 
has been fairly proved, — for I admire the truthfulness and 
candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have 
testified in this case, — had I so interfered in behalf of the 
rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in 
behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, 
sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered 
and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have 
been all right, and every man in this court would have 
deemed it an act worthy of reward, rather than punishment. 
This court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of 
the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to 
be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches 
me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do 
to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further 
to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. 
I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet 
too young to understand that God is any respecter of per- 
sons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, — 
as I have always freely admitted I have done, — I have 
done in behalf of his despised poor no wrong, but right." 

III. Another benefit is the new life it will give to the varied 
modes which have long been at work against this wrong. 
Had it not been for their previous activity, it would have 
been utterly powerless for good or evil. Twenty-five years 
ago such an act would have created no general uproar. 
The slave power was too strong, the anti-slave power too 
weak. It is far different now. The speeches, and sermons, 
and editorials, and votes, and prayers of a quarter of a 
century have not been without their effect. The quickening 
of the moral sense of the nation, the increase of sympathy 



164 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

and fraternity with the oppressed, the collisions of churches 
and parties, the very fierceness of the wrath of the slave- 
holder, have all been as fuel preparing for this spark. The 
quenching" of this spark will not cause the work to cease. 
It will go on as never before.' Not arraying the North 
against the South, but the whole nation, North and South, 
against this sin. The end is at hand. Let us not be weary 
in well doing until that end is reached. However hostile to 
this work this enterprise first appeared, new light is breaking 
upon the general mind. The party journals that fancied 
their party aims were ruined are gaining their better reason. 
Let every right way of assailing the trembling fortress not 
cease because of this diversion. They will not. The fires 
of Freedom will burn the brighter, for that which seemed 
to quench the flame is but fuel. The peaceful triumph must 
be hastened by the very failure of any scheme ^which seems 
to be infected with war. 

IV. This will not be the least beneficial in stilling the 
haughty and horrible assumptions of the leaders and man- 
agers of the Slavocracy. They have preached doctrines 
from the stump, the hall of legislation, the pulpit, the bench, 
during the last ten years, more blasphemous, more satanic 
than any that have been uttered in the civilized world since 
Christianity overthrew Paganism. No bull of the Vatican 
in the midnight point of the dark ages, no Torquemada 
defense of the Inquisition, ever made half so ungodly apol- 
ogies, or announced half so demoniacal decrees, as the 
Southern press and pulpit have done in the last decade ; 
and they were waxing worse and worse. A slave code for 
the territories, slave trade for their harbors, slave transpor- 
tation over the whole country, — this is their avowed pro- 
gramme. Their strides have been rapid and vast ; their 
steps are raised for mightier paces. This infernal march — 
I speak soberly and solemnly — this tramp of men, possessed 
by him whose name is Legion, over all human and divine 



HARPFR'S FERRY. 165 

law and life, has suddenly been made to halt. They have 
seen the Angel of the Lord ; they are pale and piteous ; they 
cry for quarter, though His sword has not left His thigh. 
Where, now, is your senatorial imperiousness ? Where 
your judicial perversions of law and history ? Where your 
executive hauteur ? Their demands, decisions, decrees, 
suddenly cease. They will revive them again, but with 
bated breath. Outwardly they may be more vociferous and 
abominable, but inwardly they fear, and whisper, " See 
there ! that strange, awful sight ; how it burns our eyeballs ! 
Northern whites as mad for Freedom as we are for Slavery. 
Made so by us, they are adopting our tactics and our weap- 
ons. As we have murdered men for Slavery in Kansas, 
as we have struck down great and high defenders of Free- 
dom and the Constitution in the Senate House, so they are 
murdering us in the cause of Liberty ; they are arming our 
slaves for their freedom. We shall lose our lives, perhaps ; 
we shall certainly lose our property and our power." They 
see in this more than votes, more than the triumph of any 
political party ; they see the death of Slavery. They see 
themselves the murderers ; the favorite offspring of their lust 
of pride, and power, and wealth dies by their own hands : 
Well may we say to them, as our prophet bard of Freedom 
did to their great leader, Calhoun, years ago, when a less 
fright congealed his soul, — 

"Are these your tones, whose treble notes of fear 
Wail in the wind ? And do ye shake to hear, 
Actason-like, the bay of your own hounds, 
Spurning the leash and leaping o'er their bounds ? 
Sore baffled statesmen, when your eager hand, 
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack, 
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land, 
Had ye no fears that, ere long, doubling back, 
These dogs of yours might snuff on Slavery's track? " 

Let their proud knees quake. They ought to fall before 
their slaves with cries of forgiveness for their inhuman con- 



166 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

duct towards them ; before their country, asking her pardon 
for the dishonor with which they have stained her fair fame 
before the world ; and, above all, before their God, implor- 
ing His mercy for their false and cruel treatment of His 
truth and children. This little event will be magnified by 
them a thousand-fold ; yet, perhaps, not too highly. May 
it lead them to instant penitence, and its all-important work. 
If I speak aught that offends your present judgment, 
weigh it carefully before you reject it. I declare only what 
I have thought, and prayed, and spoken for years. I be- 
lieve no such sin is laid at the cloor of any nation as is laid 
upon us. I believe no such sufferings are seen by the all- 
loving Omniscience in the wide earth, as He sees in the 
breasts of multitudes of powerless victims in the Southern 
shambles. I speak in the interest of no party. Politics are 
tossed on this wild and mighty sea that sweeps over the 
whole land, as fishing boats off Newfoundland, — 

" When descends on the Atlantic 
The gigantic 
Storm wind of the equinox." 

So are rocking all other great interests. The Church 
fears her dissolution ; free labor, in its grand and lesser 
divisions, fears her destruction ; the throes of this great 
birth of freedom and fraternity to the least among the races 
of men, make all classes and callings to writhe. Yet there 
shall be no death of any vital force. Government, Religion, 
the Church, the Gospel, free and varied industry, all shall 
live, and live a higher life for the struggles through which 
they are now passing. I speak with no hardness to the 
slaveholder. Some of these that I know, I esteem. All 
God has loved, and lias given His only-beloved Son, that 
they, believing on Him, might not perish. May they re- 
ceive the grace of God in its fullness, and let it lead them 
to give that which is just and equal to the slave, lest " the 
great and terrible day of the Lord come." , Would to God 



HARPER'S FERRY. 167 

they would treat their fellow-citizens in bondage as our 
fathers treated theirs — declare Slavery incompatible with 
their Constitutions, and that it ceases henceforth to exist 
in their midst. So easy, so peaceful is the way of duty in 
this matter. 

I speak in no love or expectation of a murderous upris- 
ing, or of armed intervention to aid them in rising. Their 
rights I have defended. Their duty it is not for me to 
decide. I have striven to remember them as bound with 
them. I see them as they are to-day, sitting under vines 
and fig trees not their own, with everything to molest and 
make them afraid. I see them, as they are plodding in 
conies, or crowded in holds, on their dreadful march to their 
unknown fate. With bleeding feet, and backs, and hearts, 
they are scourged from the miserable hut of their childhood, 
to the miserable grave of their early prime, from the dun- 
geon of ice to the dungeon of fire. " They have no rights,"' 
says the solemn and supreme tribunal of the land, " no rights 
which white men are bound to respect." The husband has 
no right to his wife, which you are bound to respect ; the 
maiden no right to her honor ; the mother no right to her 
babe, the babe no right to its mother ; the mind no right to 
culture ; the soul no right to its Savior ; no rights which 
white men are bound to respect ! My God, what a decree ! 
Let us obey God rather than man, and hold in higher re- 
spect their natural and divine rights, for the very contempt 
and loss they suffer at the hands of those now so powerful 
and so cruel. 

Let us not be discouraged. This deluge of hell has heard 
a voice it will obey, saying, "Hitherto shaft thou come, 
but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
The very dilemma of the captors of these men is itself pro- 
pitious. They dare not hang them ; they dare not release 
them. If they pardon John Brown, it is saying to all the 
world, " "We are verily guilty. Any man may come among 



168 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

us, invite our slaves to assume. their freedom, give them arms 
to defend that freedom, and even slay those who seem to 
oppose it, and yet we dare not hang him. Why ? Because 
we know he is right, and we are wrong." They can never 
defend their system again if John Brown is allowed to live. 

If he dies, if he mounts the scaffold for Freedom, which 
may Heaven prevent, he will slay the monster which seems 
thus to slay him. He will make the scaffold in this land as 
sacred and potent as it became in England when Vane, and 
Sidney, and Russell mounted it. Such a thrill of indigna- 
tion and remorse will freeze the soul of every man, North 
and South, slaveholder and abolitionist, as never struck 
through the heart of a great Christian nation before. Let 
John Brown's great words be fulfilled: "Now, if it is deemed 
necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of 
the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the 
blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this 
slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, 
and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done." 

Out of that death life will leap : life for those miserable 
millions now worse than dead. To his memory honors will 
be paid ; statues will bear his stern, mild features to pos- 
terity ; and when Virginia is free, — as free she will be, — one 
of her first acts will be to erect a monument to his memory, 
on the very spot where disgrace, defeat, and death now over- 
whelm him — as one of the first acts of this Commonwealth, 
after she had achieved her liberty, was to raise the lofty 
memorial to the " monomaniac " Warren, and his slain and 
defeated comrades, rebels, like these, against a legal but 
tyrannical power. 

May God help us all to give ourselves to Him, in the 
consecration of a holy heart and life, and then to the great 
moral warfare with every vice, chiefest of which, in the cry 
of the down-trodden, and the crime of the down-treader, is 
American Slavery. 




THE MARTYR.* 




NOTHER date has been added to our national his- 
tory — to the history of the world. Next to July 
4, 1*7*76, is to stand in the world's chronology, 
against the name of America, December 2, 1859. 
None between them can be placed beside them. These 
will stand with the two dates immediately preceding the 
former, — April 19 and June 17, 1*7*75, — and with two pre- 
ceding that — October 10, 1492, and December 22, 1620 — 
the Discovery of the Continent and the Landing of the 
Pilgrims, as the chief days of her history unto this hour. 
The striking of the clock of Humanity only happens when 
events of mighty influence on the destiny of nations and 
races occur. Solferino, as the moment when Italy came out 
of its grave of centuries, may have such honor. Waterloo, 
because it had no moral nor national significance, will de- 
scend from its high place, and rank only with Philippi, Ac- 
tium, Cannae, New Orleans, when dynasties are affected, not 
races. 



* An address prepared for a public meeting arranged to be bolden at 
Maiden, Mass., on the evening of the execution of John Brown. The 
meeting was not held, and the address was published in i: Zion's Her- 
ald," December 8, 1859. 

(169) 



170 THE MARTYR. 

This day is not only in its events, but in in its physical 
character, a national day. It is a Virginia winter's day, so 
warm and sunny in this region that we have sat without fires 
and with open windows ; a halcyon day, when the bird of 
freedom broods in its nest ; a day, probably, almost identical 
in character from New Brunswick to Mexico. It would seem 
as though Providence had made the universal feeling, calm, 
warm, unusual, infect the day. 

Everybody gathered about that gallows ; everybody saw 
that gallant man march serenely to his grave ; eveiybody 
felt to say, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." 
We knew, South and North, slave and slaveholder, we knew 
in our inmost hearts that he was being crowned by the 
Divine Lover of all men, the Divine Sufferer for all men, 
with glory, honor, immortality, eternal life. 

Why this interest ? Why this conviction ? Some say he 
was mad ; some say he was bloody-minded. He took the 
sword; it is right that he should perish with the sword. 
Was he insane ? Was he a monomaniac ? Did he labor under 
a mental hallucination ? So some of his many friends rep- 
resent ; but if so, why this mighty, instinctive, irrepressible 
approval ? Why do our hearts belie our lips ? Why do we 
have to put our nature under the hatchways when we con- 
demn him ? Let us look at him as our children will a half a 
century hence — ay, as we shall ere a decade of years passes 
over us. We have read the affidavits which were said to 
prove his insanity, and though we condemn the Virginia 
court that slew him for many of its rulings, we think it 
showed good sense in excluding that testimony. His mad- 
ness, according to that record, consisted in feeling that he 
was called upon to oppose slavery. He only lived to kill 
that murderer. If that is insanity, we shall find no mad- 
house large enough to contain a tithe of his companions. 
He was not mad. However erroneous his judgment, as to 
his resources or his expectations, he was a cool, shrewd, 



THE SECOXD OF DECEMBER. 171 

sane man ; and they who now, from terror or ignorance, 
brand him with insanity, will, ere many } T ears have flown, ac- 
knowledge the greatness of his wisdom. 

But whether his undertaking was wise or foolish in a pol- 
itic, worldly sense, was it right? We as Christians can 
defend no act which does not stand on this foundation. The 
question is more important ; is it more difficult ? It seems 
to be, by the utterances which have gone forth concerning 
it. "'It is destiny," says one. " It is divine sovereignty," 
says another. "It is an inscrutable Providence," says a 
third. They see the handwriting, but cannot interpret it 
any more than the terrified Belshazzar. But it ought not to 
be a hard thing to understand John Brown. It is not hard 
to see through every other deed of that transparent life, 
whether those by which he saved Kansas from the clutch 
of slavery, when he from the robber rent that prey, or those 
by which he has won all hearts since his capture. His words 
are so plain that he that runs may read them. Why is not 
this central act apprehensible ? Simply because we have 
not yet dared to study it. We have been as afraid of it as 
they of him. He was too ripe for us, but not for the cause. 
The instinct of every heart declares the latter ; the perplex- 
ities of every head the former. 

Now, this country has not gone crazy over a madman ; it 
has not forgotten its Christianity in the fascinations of a 
great murderer. The men and women that love and praise 
him are pious, humble, God-fearing, man-loving, war-hating 
men and women. Why do they praise and love him ? Be- 
cause he did simply this : He gave the slaves their freedom, 
and means to defend that freedom ; that is all. Xot a pike 
nor pistol was for aggression, for murder or rapine, but for 
defense against their otherwise murderous masters. This 
was the only new thing about this enterprise. Hundreds 
have been run off without arms of defense. Torrey has pre- 
ceded Brown to martyrdom for doing, in this way, as he 



172 THE MARTYR, 

would be done by. Brown merely added weapons of defense. 
His own assertion, repeated over and over again, establishes 
this. He was not like Warren, to whom he has been com- 
pared, in all respects, though he was in many. Warren 
armed himself and his men with the intention of- fighting. 
Brown armed himself and his slaves with the intent to pre- 
vent bloodshed. Was this wrong ? Our Master says, "He 
that hath no sword, let him sell his coat and buy one." Not 
that His disciples should engage in aggressive or vindictive 
war, but that they should defend themselves, their families, 
and their liberties, against the enslaving armies of their ene- 
mies. The church has never adopted the doctrine of non- 
resistance : it never will. As long as man feels that he has 
a right to raise his hand to protect his head against the 
murderer's blow, he will feel that he has a right to mail that 
hand, to arm that hand, for this sole purpose. For this alone 
he gave his slave brethren weapons. Can we say he had 
no right to give them ? 

But it may be said " all such interference is unjustifiable. " 
Then we are verily guilty if we aid a fugitive to escape ; 
for the law holds him in slavery here. If we say armed in- 
tervention on the soil puts a very different aspect on the case, 
let us ask ourselves what we have said of Louis Napoleon's 
armed intervention in Italy. Not like John Brown's, — a war 
of defense alone, — but purely and intentionally from the be- 
ginning a war of offense. How paeans went up to him as 
long as he was faithful to that cause ! How he was hon- 
ored with the title of the Liberator of Italy ! xind did Italy 
call Napoleon with half the imploring voice that Virginia 
called Captain Brown ? Were the Italians suffering what 
our brethren in that country are suffering ? Did the Austri- 
an sell the Venetians into hopeless bondage far into South- 
ern Italy ? Did he steal the Milanese peasant from his wife ? 
Did he seize their dark-eyed daughter, and sell her to his 
light-haired German neighbor for purposes too horrid to think 



THE SECOND OF DECEMBER. 173 

of? Were the Italians fettered and lashed, driven from 
Venice to Rome, or carried in slave ships from Genoa to 
Naples, as they are to-day from Richmond to Memphis, from 
Baltimore to Mobile? Before we judge John Brown we 
must judge every attempted liberator of his own or another 
people from tyrannical servitude. Let us cast the beam out 
of our own eye, and then shall we see clearly to take the 
mote out of our brother's eye. We shall cast it out. We 
shall see clearly. We shall unitedly say ere many days that 
this man, whom all call a Christian, has violated no Christian 
obligation in this remarkable undertaking. 

If it was the work of a sane and pious man, was it that 
of a wise one ? This seems to demand two answers. Wis- 
dom is sometimes gauged by success, sometimes not. Kos- 
suth has always been called a wise man, though he failed ; 
so Warren ; so Socrates. Did Brown fail ? The day of his 
death was the day of his greatest victory. Two things were 
in his heart. God gave them to him : Inspiration of the slave 
with such a desire for freedom as will make him ready to die 
to obtain it ; and inspiration of the pretended owner, with 
such a conviction of his sin, and such fear to continue in it, 
as will make him haste to escape from it. The first will 
appear. All who know the slaves, and dare to speak, know 
how this deed has inspired them. The last is already his. 
Every eye sees it ; every slaveholder's heart feels it. Con- 
viction of duty, and the terrible danger of neglecting it, 
have gone through that whole Southern land like an earth- 
quake. They may appear very confident ; they may shout 
over his gallows, "Abolitionism is dead; long live Sla- 
very ! " But the terrible Nemesis, shod with wool, suddenly 
stands behind them, and whispers in their affrighted ears, — 

" If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and come again." 



1,74 THE MARTYR. 

The slain knew he was not slain. No man ever went to 
a martyr's death with such assurance of success ; no man 
ever had better grounds. And that red slayer, the slave 
power, that has driven Governor Wise to wash his unwill- 
ing hands in this saintly blood, already beholds the dread 
Avenger come again. They are not eating their festal feasts 
of victory without seeing the terrible spectre, and they cry, 
with chattering teeth, — 

" Hence, horrible shadow ! 
Unreal mockery, hence ! The times have been 
That when the brains were out the man would die, 
And so an end. But now they rise again 
With twenty mortal murthers in their crowns 
To push us from our stools." 

They surround the gallows with an army. Also propi- 
tious ; for thus they bring the first citizens of Virginia from 
every section of the Commonwealth to escort their captive 
to his crown. And those clear-eyed, strong-minded sol- 
diers could not have witnessed that wonderful death without 
feeling that he and his cause were right, and would triumph. 
They must have said, hundreds of them, in their hearts, like 
Balaam before Israel, " May I die the death of that righteous 
man, and may my last end be like his ! 7? 

Then, too, the fact that this institution could only be 
upheld by the bayonet, shows it is near its end. No cause 
in this land can long stand which requires such support. 
That very display, which was not for us, not to keep their 
prisoners in their toils, but to inspire terror in the slave, 
shows that the cause that asks its aid is dying. We hail 
the omens ; the sacrifice is slain on the altar of Slavery ; 
the auguries foretell the speedy destruction of that abomi- 
nation. 

Let us not murmur at this deed, or its doer. So mur- 
mured some of our fathers at the mad enterprise of Prescott, 
and Putnam, and Warren. " Foolhardy men," they doubt- 



THE SECOND OF DECEMBER. 175 

less said, " to throw themselves against a force so far above 
them in numbers, equipment, and training ! What property 
destroyed ! What lives lost ! And he, our Commander-in- 
Chief, has flung himself most foolishly away." Not so mur- 
murs the sea of applause that beats around that great deed 
to-day from the vast ocean of humanity, even as the waves 
of every clime murmur at the base of its immortal hill. 
The Charlestown of Virginia shall stand forever beside, and 
yet above, the Charlestown of Massachusetts. 

Let Slavery then proceed to the bloody end of her unnat- 
ural revenge. Let her crunch her remaining captives, as 
she has their great leader, in her dripping jaws, grin hor- 
ribly a ghastly smile, settle down upon the burning marl, 
and gloat over the miserable victims that daily feed her 
hellish maw. Let her use their survivor to decoy the 
anti-slavery leaders to her den, so that they, too, served up 
by Judge Lynch, may tickle the delicate palate of this eater 
of men. Will the haughty slavocracy cease the less to fear 
her slaves ? Cowards fear the dead more than the living. 
She fears both. She is fast rushing to her grave. Great 
signs in the religious, the political, the social heavens, betoken 
her overthrow. All forces are uniting against her, — Church 
and State, society and civilization, — and like every tyrant, 
she loses everything, and loses it instantly, if she loses her 
Waterloo. Ere long she will lose Waterloo. Within this 
first century of our national life she will disappear. Then 
will all men unite in praising this Samson who first tore 
down the pillars of this soul-devouring Dagon. Then will 
Virginia set aside the judgment 'of her courts against these 
brave and true men who loved her better than her rulers, 
better than she loved herself, and will place beside her 
Washington, him whom she has just hung, and whose dead 
body she has spewed out of her land. 

Let every one measure this whole character and career 
by the true Christian standard, and let them so far obey 



176 THE MAETYE. 

the voice of duty and of God in their hearts as he did 
in his. 

We shall be compelled by our conscience to utter the 
whole truth to the master ; to withhold no word of sympa- 
thy and rightful succor from the slave. We shall be re- 
quired by the Father of all, the Sacrifice for all, the Illumi- 
nator of all, to feel our oneness with this race. Almost 
John Brown's last act was one whose fitness none can ques- 
tion, whose large lesson all must learn. As he left the jail, 
he saw a slave woman and her babe near its door, and, as 
she, with a smiling countenance, addressed him, he, stooping 
over, kissed her babe. Who of that crowd could have done 
that ? Who of the readers of the story ? He, face to face 
with his coffin, face to face with his God, recognizes the 
cause for which he was to die, and teaches us the lesson this 
nation is set to learn, and to teach all other nations — the 
union and fraternity of Man. 

Let the bells toll, then, on the return of this great day. 
Soon will their knell be changed to merry peals of gladness 
over the glorious consummation of Universal Emancipation, 
for which he laid down his heroic life, and received his eter- 
nal crown. 



TE DEUM LAUDAMUS.* 



" i will sing unto the lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. 

The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." — 

Exodus xv. 1. 
"But promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the 

west, nor from the south. But God is judge : He putteth 

DOWN ONE, AND SETTETH UP ANOTHER." — Ps. lxXV. 6, 7. 

"Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, 
the Stone which the builders rejected, the same is become 
the head of the corner ; this is the lord's doing, and it is 

MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES." Matt. Xxi. 42. 




NE year ago last Sabbath evening, we assembled 
in this house to meditate on the beginning of the 
end of American slavery. A fortnight before, a 
score of men had made a descent on a national 
arsenal, freed some slaves, been captured by the soldiers of 
the Federal Government, their leader tried, condemned, and 
sentenced to be hung. You well remember the month that 

* A Thanksgiving sermon delivered in the Harvard Street Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Sunday evening, November 11, 1860. 
on the occasion of the first election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presi- 
dency of the United States. 

The following dedication was appended to the sermon when pub- 
lished : — 

" To the Honorable Charles Sumner, 
Who has spoken the bravest words for Liberty in the most perilous 
places ; who has suffered in behalf of the Slave only less than those who 
12 ( 177 > 



178 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

followed — far more exciting than the one through which 
we have just passed. For thirty days, from Calais to Gal- 
veston, only one name was on every lip, only one feeling in 
every heart. You all remember the day of his death : — 

" Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky." 

You remember, far more clearly, the death itself, — more 
sweet, more cool, more calm, more bright, his soul's great 
bridal of earth and heaven. No death of greater beauty 
adorns the pages of secular history — no one sufalimer is 
in the annals of Christian martyrdom. Socrates, with the 
hemlock at his lips, was not more charming and child-like. 
Latimer, in the fire, was not more cheerful. Paul, among 
the lions, was not more triumphant. It was by far the 
greatest death-scene in American history, and will shine 
forth purer and nobler with every passing year, and pass- 
ing age. 

We come to-night not to sorrow over Liberty enslaved 
afresh — Liberty, tried by the jury of the country, and with- 
out cause, without consideration, found guilty — Liberty un- 
der sentence of death, and on her way to the scaffold. No, 
thanks be to God, the beginning of the end of slavery gives 
us gladder scenes in the opening of this act of its fast 
accomplishing drama. 

The defeat at Bunker's Hill and the death of Warren — 
a lost day and a lost leader — cast an immeasurable gloom, 
for a season, in spite of some redeeming features, over the 

wear the martyr's crown ; who has come forth from that suffering with 
the profoundest, because experimental, sympathy with the Oppressed, 
with a more intense hatred of the Oppression, yet without any bitterness 
of heart against the Oppressor; who will stand forth in the future times 
as the clearest-eyed, boldest-tongued, and purest-hearted Statesman of 
the age, — these few words of Thanksgiving and Praise for the mani- 
festation of the Presence and Power of the Almighty Eedeemer in this 
greatest work of our time, are most respectfully dedicated." 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 179 

American heart. But the second great act, executed, like 
this, in but little less than a year from the first, executed, 
like this, under the leadership of the chosen captain of their 
hosts, by which a proud and mighty enemy, flushed with 
long success, and backed by the gigantic strength of a pow- 
erful nation, without the firing of a gun, evacuated their 
most important post in the whole countiy, left it, never to 
return, — the great deed by which Washington purged Bos- 
ton of its insolent and murderous foe, — thrilled the whole 
nation with unmitigated joy. So this peaceful evacuation 
by the arrogant, wealthy, and long-ruling Slave Power of 
the most important post it ever held or can hold, never to 
return, has caused such a flood of ecstasy as never before 
filled the hearts of this people since the bells rang out the 
first declaration, and the bewildered multitudes awoke to 
the realization of their existence as a united and free na- 
tion. The perplexing and saddening features of the event 
of last year do not mar this victory. No gallows tree 
stretches its black arms athwart the golden sky ; no dying 
groans, no stiffened forms, attend the triumphal shout and 
march. Shall we not, then, come before His presence with 
thanksgivings whose right hand and holy arm hath gotten 
Him the victory ? For promotion cometh neither from the 
east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is 
judge : He putteth down one and setteth up another. 

Not in the interest of the great party through whom He 
has done this work do I appear, but in the interest of that 
cause which swells far, far beyond the power of that or any 
party to embrace — the redemption of millions upon millions 
of my fellow-men. In their behalf I raise the song of praise. 
That redemption draweth nigh. Power is passing away 
from the side of the oppressor. Power which belongeth 
unto God is being employed by Him to break this infamous 
yoke. Shall we not laud and magnify his Name, in whose 
hand are the hearts of the children of men, that he has 



180 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

turned them as the rivers of water are turned, and made 
them sweep upon, soon, we trust, to sweep away, this rooted 
and massy iniquity in their overflowing, swift-rushing flood ? 

You may ask, Is it not a profanation of the sanctuary to 
employ it for rejoicings over mere political strifes ? This is 
very far from an ordinary victory, and for its celebration we 
have the unanimous voice of all ages and all religions. 

Abraham praised God, in a temple not made with hands, 
for the defeat of his enemies, and Melchizedek, the priest 
of the Most High God, the type of Christ, poured upon his 
head the divine benedictions. The victories of the Hebrew 
kings were celebrated in the temple, and some of the grand- 
est psalms were written in praise of national deliverances. 
The heathen have followed this natural sentiment, and in all 
ages and nations have hung the trophies of their triumphs 
in their temples ; have made their praises to their gods rise 
above their shouts over their fallen foe. So the Philistines 
rejoiced before Dagon, when they had captured Samson ; 
and, in a later day, when they gained possession of the Ark 
of God. The history of Delphi and other templed spots is 
but a catalogue of such thanksgivings. The Christian 
world has, from the first, obeyed the ancestral, human law. 
" Te Deum laudamus," " We praise thee, God/ ; has rung 
through the lofty arches of great cathedrals, and against 
the dome of heaven, for more than a thousand years, when 
the Lord had given their country deliverance in the da}^ of. 
battle. 

We have, therefore, abundant precedent in the universal 
practice of our race for entering these courts, to-night, with 
thanksgivings, and these walls with praise. Have we 
abundant reason ? It may be said that these religious na- 
tional rejoicings were because of victories won on bloody 
fields, won over a foreign foe, and at the expense of human 
life. Is a mere periodical strife, peaceful and bloodless, 
between brethren of the same family, for the honors of 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 181 

civil life, — is this to be placed beside the overthrow of the 
Egyptians, the destruction of the Assyrians, the redemption 
of Europe at "Waterloo, of Italy at Solferino ? Is it not 
straining a point to thus elevate the mad whirl of quadren- 
nial politics into a great national, a great world battle, 
which marks an epoch in the history of the race ? 

These questions are very proper. For if it be but the 
ordinary strife of ordinary politics, although the Church has 
the guardianship of these as she has of every other matter 
pertaining to human duty, yet she might safely leave them 
to the general course of her counsel and authority, without 
making their ephemeral victories subject of especial exulta- 
tion. 

Let us then ask, as a needful preliminary to our songs of 
gladness and of hope, What was the subject of controversy 
in the late conflict ? 

The only subject set before the people was Slavery ; its 
extension and nationalization, or its relegation to the regions 
now blackened with it, there to 

" writhe in pain, 
And die amid its worshipers." 

Four parties were professedly in the field, but only two 
combatants, — only one question. In different parts of the 
land, the two intermediate parties took different positions, 
according to the sentiment ruling there. In the South they 
contended against the domineering passion for the national 
supremacy of Slavery. In the North they fought with 
equal zeal against its ruling passion, the national supremacy 
of Liberty. Their bands flew across the field, now striking- 
at the haughty Slave Power, and now at the iron legions of 
Freedom. 

Behind them advanced steadily the main hosts with their 
banners flying, each glowing- with its one word. On the 
one "Slavery;" on the other, "Liberty.'' Marching- be- 



182 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

neath them, each party instinctively, immeasurably felt, that 
the issue involved the most vital questions ever submitted 
to this nation ; and that the result was sure to be disas- 
trous to freedom, if defeated, fatal to slavery, if it should 
go down in the battle. 

No other question was debated by the leading- advocates 
of all parties. One of the candidates for the Presidency,* 
and one of the ablest men in the country, traversed its 
length and breadth, making many addresses ; and the bur- 
den of every one was Slavery. He endeavored to exclude 
it from the canvass, but he could not exclude it from his 
own speeches. It rounded every sentence, pointed every 
line. And it was not a little remarkable that so sagacious 
a statesman should not have perceived, that what had filled 
all his public life, good and evil, for a decade of years, was 
not to be banished from the general mind, nor settled in the 
national councils, except by a fair fight on the appointed 
field. 

The other party, though attempting to banish it from 
its platform, showed the impossibility of the attempt in 
its very phraseology. For its two chief words, " Constitu- 
tion and Union," proved that it felt or fancied these to 
be endangered by the struggle with slavery. Its worthy 
appendix, "the enforcement of the laws," was aimed solely 
at the execution of the most unchristian and inhuman act 
that ever issued from a Christian legislature. 

From the unwilling but universal confession of neutrals, 
therefore, no less than from the declarations of real oppo- 
nents, do we see clearly the field of conflict. The real 
weapons of the real fighters were all drawn from one armo- 
ry, all waged in one battle. The only speaker that advo- 
cated the Southern party in this region made the strongest 
defense of human slavery ever made in Massachusetts. 
There was an honest boldness that was refreshing to wit- 

* Stephen A. Douglas. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 183 

ness, in inviting Mr. Yancey to give a pro-slavery speech 
in Faneuil Hall — a boldness no party would have been 
equal to in any previous campaign. The invitation was not 
accepted by a timid man. No abler, no more courageous 
speech was ever made in Boston than Mr. Yancey's, viewed 
as a eulogy on a system abhorrent in the utmost degree to 
almost every one of his audience. As he was here, so 
were his associates everywhere on slave soil. As he was 
here, so would the advocates of freedom have been, had 
they been allowed to speak in Richmond, Charleston, Mo- 
bile, or New Orleans. So were they on their native heather, 
the broad, free soil of the North. 

Not a syllable was breathed against the candidate of 
Slavery, except his devotion to that system ; not a syllable 
against the victorious leader of the hosts of Freedom, ex- 
cept his opposition to it. "It is the cause/' then, "it is 
the cause, my friends," that has organized, inspired, waged 
and won this national battle. It is the cause, too, that 
commands me to speak to-night, to speak in my official 
capacity, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, upon one of the 
especial objects of His mission — the freedom, equality, and 
fraternity of the human race. 

Some may yet complain that we drag the holy vestments 
of the altar in this mire of social strife. Do you remember 
how Phinehas, the priest of the Most High God, possibly 
while arrayed in most sacred robes, and in his hand the 
sacrificial knife consecrated exclusively to the service of 
the altar, rushed in among the sinning Israelites and their 
idolatrous associates, slaying heathen and Hebrew in the 
midst of their profane abominations ? And do you remem- 
ber how that Most High God said to Moses, " Phinehas, 
the son of Eleazer, the son of Aaron, the priest, hath turned 
my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was 
zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the 
children of Israel in my jealousy ? Wherefore say, ' Behold, 



184 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

I give unto him my covenant of peace : and he shall have 
it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlast- 
ing priesthood : because he was zealous for his God, and 
made an atonement for the children of Israel.' n Was it a 
greater deed for this minister to stay the plague of volun- 
tary passion, than for us to seek to stay that plague which 
makes pure and pious men and women the victims of every 
conceivable lust that power, avarice, or passion breeds ? 

If Christ showed that the zeal of the house of the Lord 
had eaten him up, by scourging from the temple, the seat 
of civil as well as religious authority, those that sold doves, 
shall we say His servants are not His followers when they 
seek to scourge from our temple of civil and religious lib- 
erty those that sell men ? The temple of our national life 
has become defiled. Woe to that priest who is dumb before 
the defilers ! In Christ's day some of them shared in the 
business that profaned his house. In our day some of them 
share in the honors and profits of this far greater profana- 
tion. Let us obey the example He has set us, — not the 
decrees of timid, time-serving, wicked men. 

But this defense is unnecessary before this congregation. 
The contest as to the rights and duties of the ministry to 
engage in this work has long been settled in this region. 
Here and there, the rare exceptions requisite to prove a 
rule rise before us, denying the privileges of humanity to 
those who are set to apply to the hearts of men all the laws 
of the Divine Author of humanity. Not so with the multi- 
tudes. Slavery is to them an object not only of civil, but 
of religious detestation. Its defeat, on any field, is a cause 
of religious thanksgiving. Its defeat on the field where it 
has just fallen, — the field it has ruled the longest and the 
ablest, where its chief seat is by choice, and by necessity 
if it retain any seat in the land, its overthrow and its expul- 
sion from the throne of the national government, its flight 
to its native lair, and the soon coming fight there for bare 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 185 

existence, — these are subjects of the most devout, the most 
rapturous praise. "Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but 
unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy and Thy truth's 
sake." 

Let us, then, gratefully meditate on the late victory, con- 
sidering its cause and its consequence. 

I. Its Cause. Why has Freedom triumphed ? 

For two chief reasons among a multitude of lesser ones : 
First, the growth of conscience as to the nature and effects 
of slavery ; and, Second, the growth of fear as to its politi- 
cal power and prospects. 

1. The first and profoundest cause is the awakening of the 
conscience of the nation as to the dreadful character and 
workings of slavery. 

There must always be two periods, at least, of attack 
upon any organized iniquity before the tide of moral senti- 
ment deluges and drowns it forever. The first awakening 
is moderately efficient, but the mighty sin is too strong for 
complete overthrow. The besieging hosts get weary and 
slumber on their arms. The enemy sallies forth and tri- 
umphs over them. They dwell in captivity to the evil 
which they rose up against. Again the conscience grows, 
again the vice is attacked, and in the new assault is left 
weaker than before, perhaps completely destroyed ; if not, 
the victorious right yields anew to the slumber of sloth and 
sin ; is chained and ruled afresh, again bursts its bands and 
sweeps on irresistibly to victory. Thus, by tidal waves of 
flux and reflux, the huge mountain of sin is finally buried 
beneath the deep, abounding ocean of truth. 

So the Jews moved forward, from Joshua to David, in the 
subjugation of Canaan. So Christianity has marched, is 
marching forward in the subjugation of the world. So 
Grecian idolatry, in a hand-to-hand fight with early Chris- 
tianity, fell and rose, fell and rose, weaker at each resurrec- 
tion, till, three hundred years after its first defeat, that form, 



186 TE DETJM LAUDAMUS. 

eminent and potent for more than a thousand years, fell, 
never to rise again. So Eoman slavery staggered and tum- 
bled before the sharp blows of the same Apostolic Chris- 
tianity, — sprang to its feet with the ferocity and strength 
of a wounded lion, and rent its enemies in pieces ; again 
felt the shafts, again reeled and fell, again rose and raged, 
till, after half a millennium, the golden rule of the Savior 
and the golden command of His apostle to Christian mas- 
ters to give their servants that which was just and equal, 
were finally obeyed, and throughout Christian Europe, prop- 
erty in man passed into the execrable list, abjured and 
abominated by every person. 

The black race, in consequence of its seclusion and deg- 
radation, was separated almost entirely from this influence. 
True, Africa had been honored with the earliest, and, in 
many respects, the ablest of Christian schools. Her sons 
had worn the consecrated mitre, and sat in equal authority 
with the Bishops of Koine and Jerusalem in Episcopal 
Councils. But the ravages of the Vandals nipped this bud- 
ding civilization, and Mussulman fanaticism perpetuated the 
work northern Paganism had achieved. 

Christian Europe, hemmed in by Mohammedanism on the 
south and south-east, and by the wildest heathenism on the 
north and north-east, without extensive commerce and with- 
out mechanic arts, itself the child of northern idolatry, bap- 
tized with the childish Christianity of Rome, grew, by slow 
and unequal steps, to a true manhood in Christ. So far had 
she retrograded from her earliest faith in the last two cen- 
turies, that traffic in human flesh was again found among 
her lawful commerce. And though she never fell back so 
far as to acknowledge the right of property in the white 
and Christian man, she did finally recognize the idea of 
ownership in the African race. 

It was reserved for this land to inaugurate the work of 
universal emancipation. That work began with the begin- 



ELECTIOX OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. 187 

ning of our history, and has risen and fallen, with mingled 
success and failure, to the victory of this hour. Massa- 
chusetts first refused to receive a cargo of slaves at the 
same time that Virginia first welcomed them. The princi- 
ples involved in those two deeds have been in conflict, 
violent or latent, throughout our whole history. 

The fundamental law, on which universal personal free- 
dom must stand, the law of perfect equality before God, 
has long been settled here, has never yet been acknowl- 
edged elsewhere in the world. America was settled by the 
flower of Protestantism before it had fallen into the sear 
and yellow leaf of formalism, or the thrice dead infidelity 
which covered all Europe, Protestant and Papal, in the 
last century, with thorns and briers fit only for cursing, and 
doomed to be burned. 

Our fathers, the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts, 
the Baptists of Ehode Island, the Quakers and Lutherans 
of Pennsylvania, the Episcopalians of Virginia, the Roman- 
ists of Maryland, and the Huguenots of Carolina, were 
all refugees from religious persecution. Every State was 
settled or largely populated by sufferers for conscience' sake. 
And after a few ineffectual struggles to employ the same 
cramps and fetters upon others that had been visited upon 
themselves, they arose, one after another, to the true appre- 
hension of the rights of conscience, and Puritan and Epis- 
copalian, Baptist and Pedobaptist, Quaker and Lutheran, 
Huguenot and Romanist, came to that broad table-land of 
universal freedom for the religious sentiment which is still 
the most wonderful characteristic of this nation. 

So thoroughly had this doctrine filled the air of common 
life, long before the formation of our confederacy, that only 
the briefest and most incidental reference to the whole sub- 
ject is found in our Constitution. I have heard a scholarly 
Englishman complain of it for this very defect — a defect 
like that found in the Bible, where proofs of the existence 



188 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS 

of God and the obligations of Religion are never given, its 
every line assuming these as accredited, universal truths. 

So did our fathers settle the other great question — the 
greatest that affects our human relations — the absolute 
right of every man to himself. Advancing, not ascending, 
on the lofty table-land of the equality of every man before 
God, they stood upon that first of human truths — the 
equality of every man before his fellows. While Europe 
bowed down to certain families and individuals as royal and 
sovereign by right divine, and, as a natural consequence, 
esteemed the other extreme of society, whether peasants or 
slaves, as void of all rights which the crouchers were bound 
to respect, the American people, coming together, through 
their representatives, themselves the nominal holders of 
slaves, unanimously, unhesitatingly, enthusiastically de- 
clared that " all men are created equal." Such a decla- 
ration by the founders of a nation the world had never 
heard before. 

Their first struggle was to establish their own equality 
before King, and Nobles, and Parliament, and a haughty 
people. They must prove the fallacy of the divine right 
of kings on the battle-field. Only one great inspiration can 
possess at a time a man or a people. This broad platform 
must rest on the head of king and slaveholder, but it must 
be planted on that of the king first, as the most imminent 
and dangerous foe. Hence the revolutionary struggle and 
victory. 

When they had emerged from that conflict — when George 
the ■ Third saluted George Washington, and, through him, 
the American people, as his perfect equal, then came a 
second duty — to preserve this equality among themselves. 
How perilous was their state you can faintly conceive, by 
seeing how all classes have just been swept into the current 
of an unnatural reverence for the youthful heir of that 
throne. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 189 

These patriots were born royalists. A vast proportion 
of the people were, in feeling and theory, royalists. Every 
city was full of wealth and fashion thus devoted. If Eng- 
land's royalty and nobility were expelled, might not Amer- 
ica substitute one of her own ? Italy has just proved the 
passion of a people for a king. Mazzini and Garibaldi had 
to yield to Victor Emanuel, republicanism to royalty. So 
might it have been here. Our fathers saved us by self- 
denial. It was a greater work to deliver themselves from 
themselves than from England. " Greater is he that ruleth 
his spirit than he that taketh a city." 

Every member of that Constitutional Convention could 
have had an American title of nobility. Lands for the sup- 
port of the title were far more abundant than William's 
barons found them in England in the eleventh century. The 
leaders of the people, Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and 
Jefferson, would have been of the blood royal, or next the 
throne. They saw the peril. They must meet it. They 
did. They especially guarded against inequality of rank, 
forbade the receipt of titles from foreign courts, and steered 
clear of the currents that might sweep them into that chan- 
nel — a senate without pay or for life, an executive for life 
or for a long term of years. And they consummated their 
precautions by one of their earliest acts of legislation — 
forbidding the increase of the Society of the Cincinnati, or 
even its continuance among the sons of the original mem- 
bers, as this society, being composed of the officers of the 
Revolution, might, through the fascination of the military 
spirit, endanger their primal and most vital idea — equality, 
liberty. 

As we have said, only one fever can rage at a time, only 
one great duty be done at once. Therefore, while their 
sympathies went out for the slave population, while their 
conscience told them they should be equally faithful and 
honest to these as to themselves, their exhausting labors 



190 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

were in another direction. They rested from their labors, 
fondly hoping their children would take up and apply their 
great principles to this oppressed people. 

Of the chief revolutionary patriots, Franklin alone was 
an avowed abolitionist. Jefferson wrote against slavery, 
or rather wrote reflections upon it, but never worked vigor- 
ously for its extinction. Franklin cast his influence on that 
side, probably more because he dwelt among the liberty- 
loving Quakers than from an inherent passion of his own. 
Washington disliked it, but when urged by Lafayette to 
make the experiment of emancipating and hiring his ne- 
groes, he declines on account of the embarrassed state of 
his property ; and yet he died shortly after, leaving an estate 
estimated at half a million of dollars, which is more than a 
million at the present valuation of money. 

The fact must be stated, that, while faithful to one half of 
their theory, they were practically indifferent to the other. 
While abolishing all titular distinctions and equalizing all 
the white inhabitants, they failed to abolish the title of 
slaveholder, and to give their colored brethren that which 
was just and equal. 

The battle on this field exhausted all their energies. To 
keep this liberty from licentiousness, this equality from 
familiarity, to preserve an aristocracy, to sustain democracy 
against aristocracy, to secure state rights, to maintain the 
federal unity and strength, — on these important fields the 
war raged, and the servant of servants was unnoticed in his 
servitude among the great questions of social and political 
equality that so violently agitated the governing- classes. 

This work was perhaps as much as one age could do. It 
was certainly more than any one age had previously done. 
The men who achieved it were more than thirty years in 
accomplishing it. Thomas Jefferson wrought wondrously 
for the rights of man, from It 76 to 1809 — thirty -three 
years of most remarkable service in a most remarkable 



ELECTION OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 191 

cause. He was then past sixty — an old man, weary with 
the cares of State — not fit in vigor or vehemence for the 
great work of emancipation. Failing to keep progressive, 
he slid backward, and dishonored his gray hairs by apolo- 
gizing for slavery and defending the Missouri Compromise. 

The generation that succeeded them, as great men's sons 
are apt to be, were very poor imitators of their illustrious 
fathers. Most trees bear only biennially. Most genera- 
tions are under a similar law. A great calm follows a great 
storm. The children of these revolutionary parents were 
feeble in principle, low in moral tone. They were tired of 
great ideas and great deeds. The overstrained nature 
sprang back to the narrower range which men naturally 
prefer. The leading men of that age, men who have just 
left us, were far below their fathers in greatness of nature, 
and will be incalculably beneath them in greatness of fame. 
Clay, Calhoun, Adams, Webster, and Jackson, its five repre- 
sentative men, present to the historian no such lofty traits 
of character or service as shine in the names of five repre- 
sentatives of the preceding era — Washington, Samuel Ad- 
ams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin. 

John Quincy Adams alone of his peers held forth the 
light that glowed in his youth. But not he till he had 
descended from the presidential throne into the vale of age 
and comparative political obscurity. Hardly a word of his 
can be quoted before his seventieth year, that has the ring- 
ing sound of liberty. How different from the young John 
Adams in the mass meetings of Boston, the provincial Con- 
gress, and Independence Hall. Fortunate was he that those 
last few years and that congressional opportunity were 
given him. 

It was an era of the deadening of the conscience, 
on the subject of freedom. Church and State alike fell 
into the slumber. Political and religious compromises be- 
came the order of the dav. The sentiment of the fathers 



192 TE DEUM LAEDAMUS. 

was against slavery. But sentiment can do nothing against 
sin. And so the sons came to endure, to pity, to embrace 
the unclean thing, and, from Calhoun to Webster, fell down 
and worshiped the abominable idol their pious fathers had 
neglected to destroy. 

"New times demand new measures and new men." 

The new times had arrived. Xew men and their new 
measures were not wanting. The third generation appears 
on the stage of action. The grandsires find their likeness 
in their grandchildren, not their children. Thirty years 
passed from the triumph of Jefferson to that of Jackson, the 
representatives of the ideas of their generations. Thirty 
years have passed from the triumph of Jackson to that of 
the Anti-slavery sentiment, not in the person of its recog- 
nized exponent, but still in the strength of its mighty feel- 
ing and purpose. These last thirty years cover the era 
of this agitation, cover the adult life of the agitators. You 
will find on "The Liberator" of this year, "Volume XXX. : " 
and this sheet has the honor of initiating the movement in 
this nation. 

The conscience was aroused very slowly. The deadly 
slumber was jneasant. Churches, societies, parties, every 
body disliked to be disturbed. But the young men sympa- 
thized with young Mr. Garrison and his young idea. Young 
Mr. Seward, then emerging into public life, felt the throb- 
bings of the new inspiration. Young Mr. Phillips and Mr. 
Sumner, then students at Harvard or on their way thither : 
the youthful Tappan, and Leavitt, and Lovejoy, and Gid- 
dings, and Gerritt Smith, caught the flame in their fresh 
and sympathetic hearts, and commenced kindling it in the 
breasts of others. Dr. Channing and John Quincy Adams 
were almost the only men of accomplished fame that in- 
dorsed the enterprise, and they did not publicly cooperate 
with its youthful managers. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 193 

Soon bitter conflicts sprang up in the breasts of these 
young philanthropists. The fresh-armed men began to bite 
and devour one another, and were well nigh consumed one 
of another. Yet still the great inspiration moved on, 
through them, in spite of them. New measures were re- 
quired by the progress of the sentiment. It demanded a 
chance to express itself at the ballot-box, and began to 
feebly, but faithfully, reveal its power on this field where it 
stands to-day victorious. 

Thus steadily have advanced the conscience and the cause. 
The vast majority of the men of to-day have grown up un- 
der its power ; for the mass of men are under forty-five 
years of age. The impressible youth of fifteen, who drank 
of this new wine when it was first pressed from the grapes 
of a fresh experience, is to-day the governor elect of your 
commonwealth. The poor youth of twenty, toiling in the 
solitude of western rivers and forests, learning to abhor 
slavery because of its contempt for honorable industry, is 
to-day the civil leader of the cause and country. 

Thus has the principle which moved our grandsires to 
the great work of personal liberation moved us toward the 
completion of their work, in the liberation of more persons 
than their valor saved, from a bondage infinitely worse than 
that which pressed them down. 

2. But fears created by the rapid march of the slave 
power have aided in this work. The growth of this power 
has been a necessary complement of the corresponding 
growth of the abolition sentiment. The Gospel is a savor 
of life unto life and of death unto death. Conscience is 
one and the same in every man. But conscience trampled 
upon is sure to revenge itself by allowing the passions 
that expel it from its seat to assume a diabolic sovereignty. 
The Southern mind felt as keenly as the Northern that 
slavery was a sin. There was but one testimony from the 
whole land in our early history, and even as late as the 
13 



194 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

beginning of this agitation. But when the spirit within 
began to be heard, saying, clearly, "Extirpate this evil. 
Let my oppressed go free, and break every yoke," — self- 
interest said, "Nay; I shall impoverish myself by so doing. 
My money is invested in slaves. My habits and tastes are 
educated in slavery. My heart inclines to it." So they 
resisted the Spirit of God. They trampled under foot the 
national life-principle. They counted the revolutionary blood 
shed for them an unholy thing. They turned and rent those 
who cast these pearls at their feet, and who called upon 
them to adorn themselves with their luster. 

They began to defend the system through the press, in 
the forum, on the bench, from the pulpit. They sought to 
extend it. They sought to open the accursed trade which 
should populate their wildernesses with the barbaric merchan- 
dise. They enthroned themselves in the national legisla- 
ture, in the presidential chair, in the supreme court. They 
trod out freedom of the press, freedom of speech, almost 
freedom of thought, in all the Slave States. They were on 
the point of nationalizing slavery in the Territories, in every 
free State. Their children, fifty years hence, will not be- 
lieve their fathers zealously advocated practices so abhor- 
rent to human nature. 

There was no real change in the Southern conscience. 
That still told them, " You are verily guilty concerning your 
brother." " Slavery is the sum of all villainies." I never 
saw a slaveholder who did not, when he spoke his real sen- 
timents, make this confession. 

A gentleman who long lived in Alabama told me he had often 
heard slaveholders, worth a million dollars in this property, 
say, " The slaves have just as much right to their freedom 
as I to mine." It was this conscience that made the whole 
South shake with undisguisable terror, when they heard that 
hero-martyr saying to their bondmen, "You are as free as 
I or your master. Here is a weapon to defend yourself, if 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 195 

they attempt to enslave you. Here is one who will aid 
you in using that weapon, if they dare to attack you." 
Their audacious course consummated its malignity in the 
murder of that man, who, every one of them knew, was in 
the right and doing right. For they saw, however blind we 
might be, that he was of the blood royal of mankind, most 
of whom rule the race from the scaffold. They felt that he 
was proving in this deed his lineal descent from the patri- 
otic but defeated Gracchi, and Demosthenes, and Wallace, 
and Hampden, and Vane, and Russell, and Warren.* But 
time would fail me to mention the grand list of martyrs for 
liberty into whose front ranks the3 r beheld him enter, who 
all died in the faith, not inheriting the promises. 

This God-defying march of the hosts of Satan upon the 
sacred institutions, the more sacred inspirations of the land, 
helped to stimulate the already quickening conscience of the 
North. The heaviest eyes began to open — the dullest 
natures to stir. Every one whose heart throbbed with any 
of the life of their fathers, of their fathers' God, felt that 
the evil must be rebuked, must be repressed, must be extir- 
pated, so far as any constitutional or moral power could do 
it. So the Church and the State have moved together, — 
here slowly and cautiously, there boldly and manfully, 
everywhere motion, everywhere life, until the mighty 
work is wrought which puts our government, openly and 
entirely, on the side of Freedom. 

This, then, is the cause, this alone — the Spirit of God 
moving on the hearts of the children of men. " This is the 
Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." "Not 
unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give 
glory." The Lord hath triumphed gloriously. " The horse 
and his rider," the Northern political slave and his South- 
ern political master, "hath He cast into the sea." 

* See Note VIII. 



196 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

II. Consider the consequences of this victory, which is one 
in fact, though threefold in form. 

1. It will suppress all efforts to extend slavery. The 
battle was waged at this point. Here, too, was it won. 
For the first time in all this long conflict the hostile parties 
agreed as to the object in dispute. Every previous Demo- 
cratic Convention shut off the real issue from the people. 
The Whig and American parties, when alive, were equally 
careful. Tariff, banks, the Roman Catholic question, re- 
trenchment and reform, — all these have turned away the 
gaze of the masses from their real danger and duty. Mr. 
Douglas supposed that what had been would still be, and 
therefore attempted to get up a war-cry that should mean 
nothing, while under its delusion the people should again 
put in power their haughty tyrant. But the honesty of the 
slave power swept away this subterfuge. They boldly 
placed at the head of their columns the universal su- 
premacy of slavery. The fre^e sentiment hailed the conflict. 
The deadly embrace is passed, and slavery lies prone upon 
the field. A tyrant once slain is slain forever. Error can 
never survive its Waterloo. Freedom had often fallen, but 
it rose ever the more beautiful and strong from its momen- 
tary defeat. Slavery has fallen, never to rise again defiant, 
successful. It will rule in New York and Boston before it 
ever rules again at Washington. It ruled there first only 
by our consent. We must rehabilitate it at home before we 
allow it to return thither. 

This absolute and unquestioned gain — the point, the 
center of the fight — is almost incalculable. Some speak 
slightingly of it, and say nothing is done. The Fugitive Slave 
Act is recognized by President Lincoln as constitutional. 
He will favor the admission of Slave States if they come 
constitutionally to the door of the nation. These are not 
agreeable sights. Yet, consider how unlikely they are to 
occur. What Slave State will seek admission to an Anti- 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 197 

Slavery confederacy ? As for the fugitive from slavery, 
unless vital modifications are made in the present law, the 
people will take care that he is not returned. Can one 
here be seized, and sentenced to bondage again, as Anthony 
Burns was, passing down State Street in broad daylight, 
fettered by a squad of foreign mercenaries, when more than 
a hundred thousand of the citizens of Massachusetts have 
put the most eloquent defender of the Personal Liberty Bill 
in the chair of State ? 

The accursed oceanic slave trade will forever cease. New 
York will be relieved from the miserable honor of sending- 
out these vessels, — Savannah and Charleston, the more 
miserable honor of receiving their cargoes. Africa and 
Cuba will be girdled with a moving wall of fire through 
which but few of the dreadful craft can pass. If nothing 
more were done than is assuredly done, it is wonderful, it 
is worthy of unbounded thanksgivings. 

2. But, secondly, we have done still more. We have set 
ourselves right before the world. We shall cast our influ- 
ence, as a great nation, on the side of universal liberty. 
For years we have been a by-word and a hissing among the 
nations. Not a word for freedom could escape the lips of 
our representatives abroad, for they were bound, hand and 
foot, mouth and tongue, with the grave-clothes of the body 
of this death. Our influence has been against liberty 
everywhere, in every man. The conscience of the slave- 
holder, the conscience of the tyrants of France and Austria 
and Rome, were stifled in the deadly air which our govern- 
ment exhaled. All this is changed. America will stand 
forth in the glory of her earlier, better days ; in a glory 
greater than that, for we now appear as the upholder of the 
rights of every man, of every hue and condition. Italians 
contend for the rights of Italians, Hungarians for Hunga- 
rians, Englishmen for Englishmen ; we, alone, for the black 
race, the weakest and least favored of the children of 



198 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

Adam. Napoleon boasted that he went to war for an idea. 
We fought for vastly more, — the foundation principle of 
humanity, — the oneness of man in blood and destiny. 

This influence is worth everything. It is irrepressible, 
it is unavoidable. The acts and words of the Administra- 
tion will be most careful and moderate, but this power it 
cannot repress. It is an Anti-slavery Government. It was 
created because it was anti-slavery. This word assures us 
that a new life is breathed into the soul of the nation. It 
will thrill with its enthusiasm every section of the land, 
every corner of the globe. Distracted Mexico will now 
turn entreating eyes upon us, certain to see no wolfish leer 
in our gaze, hungering to reduce her citizens to slaves. 
The South American Republics will sit at our feet, and fol- 
low our footsteps in the upward march to perfect freedom. 
Hayti will stand at our Capitol among the great nations, its 
representative sitting with those of England and France, in 
the seats of ambassadorial dignity and equality.* Italy, and 
France, and England, will, as never before, admire and imi- 
tate the mistress of nations, sitting in the glory of univer- 
sal liberty on the highest seat of earthly authority. 

What is better than all, the sweet, summer morning air 
of freedom will once more steal over the hot and arid plains 
of Southern despotism. Blowing from the whole Xorth, 
through Washington, through the Executive mansion, it 
will nerve with vigor many a soul now paralyzed with fear. 
The minister of Christ, who has there, for these many years, 
denied his Master, will weep bitterly, and speak earnestly 
against the fearful crime that has so long cursed the Church 
and his own soul. Literature will feel it. Southern Whit- 
tiers will arise, who shall make her hills and glades echo 
with their trumpet blasts of denunciation, their trumpet 
calls to the conflict and the victory. Mrs. Stowes will 

* The representative of Hayti was admitted in the first year of Pres- 
ident Lincoln's administration. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 199 

spring from their own soil, who will portray the evils and 
wrongs of their cherished "institution," the duty and bless- 
edness of universal emancipation, in colors that shall out- 
shine their marvelous prototype, because they will be drawn 
from personal experiences, and filled with the enthusiasm 
that only such experiences can inspire. The whole people 
will be made alive with the mighty wind, blowing from the 
hills of God over their fields of dry bones, and they shall 
stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army, for freedom. 

What is already seen on the northern border of the black 
abyss will be seen everywhere. St. Louis gives almost 
ten thousand votes for liberty, as many as Boston, and, 
better than Boston, with these votes sends a bold and ear- 
nest abolitionist to the national councils. Baltimore gives 
over a thousand votes for freedom, — as many as the whole 
State of Massachusetts gave twenty years ago. That thou- 
sand has become a hundred thousand here in a score of years. 
It will become that there ere half that time has passed. 
In every Southern city, even Charleston, the worst, will be 
found representatives of an anti-slavery government. In 
every State, papers will be advocating its principles ; in 
every heart, the Spirit of God, which is liberty, will assert 
its claims, be acknowledged and obeyed. Soon that Ser- 
pent shall be bound, shall be hurled into the bottomless pit, 
shall disappear from this first and best of lands, and, with 
it, from the earth, forever. 

3. For this glorious victory assures the speedy abolition 
of slavery. I say speedy, not with a few months, or a 
Presidential term, in view, but with only a few years, in 
comparison with its long life and wide dominion. 

The knell of slavery was struck last year in the heroic 
deed, and more heroic death, of John Brown. He first 
shook the tottering Bastile to its foundations. It had been 
riddled, it had been undermined, but it had not rocked on 
its base till he put his hand upon it. It reeled to and fro 



200 TE DEUM LAUD AMI'S. 

like a slave ship in a storm, and well nigh foundered, then. 
I have frequently mentioned this event with words of ap- 
proval such as but few. probably, in this audience will 
reecho. It is proper, therefore., that I should pause, and 
eive a brief reason for my opinions. Our witty neighbor 
says the millennium is near at hand, — 

•• When preachers tell us all they think. ?: 

I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel 
of God on the highest of our duties. I shall not play the 
hypocrite now. Allowing- the largest liberty of opinion to 
others. I claim equal liberty for myself. I know how the 
tide of misconception and condemnation still sets against 
Captain Brown. I know that the ■'•'Tribune" and "Inde- 
pendent," — anti-slavery journals of deseiwed influence. — 
still speak of his attempt as a " raid" — a term of disparage- 
ment, if not of reproach. I know Mr. Seward said he was 
'•'justly hanged." I know that many cry out with horror at 
the bare idea of putting weapons in the hands of the slave-, 
to maintain their freedom, and say that he that apologizes 
for such an act defiles his sacerdotal garments, and is be- 
come a companion with murderers. 

But. on the other hand. I see how Victor Hugo and the 
other great and yore patriots of Europe can find no words 
to express theii admiration of the deed and its doer.* 
Struggling in chains of despotism at home, they know how 
to appreciate the intense humanity of one who strove not 
to save himself, but others, from a far worse tyranny than 
crushes them down. I see Hayti. the only really inde- 
pendent and enterprising African State, hailing the man 
with a spontaneous reverence and admiration, and out of 

* In the winter of the execution. Victor Hugo etched and published 
with his autograph a print of John Brown on the gallows, hanging in 
r. :ck darkness, with only a slight gray light falling on the head. It had 
a .Treat sale in Paris. 



ELECTION' OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 201 

her poverty sending to his family thousands of dollars as a 
token of her gratitude. I see the strong arm of Massa- 
chusetts wielding a sword, while she pronounces the sen- 
tence first uttered by the slaughtered patriot, Algernon 
Sydney, which might have been properly emblazoned on 
John Brown's banners, " Ense petit placidam sub libertate 
quietem " — " She seeks, with the sword, serene quiet under 
liberty. " Virginia's motto should also shine there. That 
stately maiden, with her foot on a prostrate and fiendish foe, 
with " Sic semper tyrannic" — "Thus always may it be to 
tyrants," — encircling her victorious brow, — how happily 
it answers to his creed and career ! Surely what Massachu- 
setts and Virginia have put upon their seals may be put 
into action against the worst tyrant that ever desecrated 
American soil or trampled on American hearts. The maiden, 
called Liberty and Humanity, is under the hoof of the fiend. 
God will bless him who rescues her, and puts his heel on the 
head of the destroyer. 

There is nothing in human nature, human history, or the 
Word of God, that rebukes this sentiment. The gospel of 
Peace does not always require of its disciples non-resistance 
to every form of revolting oppression, but sometimes de- 
mands of them a stern resistance even "unto blood, striv- 
ing- against sin." * 

JfFhe Savior himself, among his last injunctions, commands 
those of His disciples who had no sword, to sell their tunic, 
or chief garment, and buy one ; thereby clearly teaching 
us that the clothing needful for the protection of our bodies 
is not to be esteemed above the means of defending our liber- 
ties and our lives. This enterprise, as we understand it, 
sought to put the sword in the hands of the slave, only 
that he might defend his God-given freedom against his 
enslavers. So deep and universal is the conviction of this 
right, that had the people whom he strove to deliver been 
of our own race, or even of any race but the African, that 



202 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

we hold in such inhuman contempt, there would have been 
no more question as to the rightfulness of the enterprise than 
there was to the many unsuccessful attempts of our fathers 
to release their brethren from the far less terrible slavery in 
which they were held by the corsairs of Algiers. 

In the light of these facts and principles, I find no con- 
demnation for this man or his deed. In the light of its 
influence on the hideous wrong it assailed, I see much in 
it to approve. I cannot but conclude, therefore, that the 
words of censure so rife at present are the offspring of long- 
indulged prejudice, or when uttered by some of our wise 
leaders, have been prompted either by an unwise desire to 
commend the anti-slavery chalice to the lips of slaveholders, 
by removing" some of the bitter but essential ingredients 
that strengthen the potion, or else by the temptations of 

ambition, — 

" That last infirmity of noble minds." 

In either case they will yet be regretted more than any 
other of their utterances. 

If this be called fanaticism, I am content to bear the 
imputation. I am not alone in this State, however it may 
be elsewhere, if the late election truly expresses the senti- 
ment of the people. The election to the governorship, by 
the largest vote any candidate ever received, of the man 
who, more than all others, labored to save him from that 
"just" death, who publicly indorsed his character, if not 
the abstract rightfulness of the attempt, — such an elevation 
of his best friend to our best office is a strong evidence 
that our common sense and common humanity are getting 
the better of our fears and prejudices. The hated Mordecai 
already descends here, from the gallows of public con- 
demnation on which the Haman of a subtle pro-slaveryism 
had hung him, and rides through our streets in the royal 
apparel of executive sovereignty, as the man whom the 



ELECTION OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 203 

people delighteth to honor. As if to show that this re- 
markable act of the people of Massachusetts was not the 
blind following of blind political leaders, but a silent yet 
real voice of approval, her favorite lyric poet comes forth 
and places a garland of exquisite beauty and perfume on 
the grave of the hero. Under the influence of his religious 
training, the Quaker Whittier cast upon his coffin a hastily 
gathered wreath of bitter herbs. But true also to the fun- 
damental principles of his faith, through the influences of 
the events and reflections of the past year, he has discov- 
ered the " Inner Light" of superior truth, and with charac- 
teristic frankness, has published the revelations of that Light. 
A late poem, written on the liberation of Italy, by its own 
confession, covers the whole ground of the present contro- 
versy. The laurel which he places on Garibaldi's brow, 
he hangs alike on John Brown's tomb. Hear the sentiment 
of almost every Christian in these true and tender and solemn 
words : — 

' I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained 

By Martyr meekness, patience, faith, 

And lo, an athlete grimly stained, 

With corded muscles battle-strained, 

Shouting it from the field of death ! 
***** 

I know the pent fire heaves the crust ; 

That sultry skies the bolt will form 

To smite them clear ; that nature must 

The balance of her powers adjust, 

Though with the earthquake and the storm. 

And who am I, whose prayers would stay 
The solemn recompense of time, 
And lengthen Slavery's evil day 
That outraged Justice may not lay 
Its hand upon the sword of crime ! 

God reigns, and let the earth rejoice ! 
I bow before His sterner plan. 
Dumb are the organs of my choice ; 
He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 
His praise is in the wrath of man ! " 



204 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

If the violent act of one man thus paralyzed this iniquity, 
much more will the peaceful act of two millions tend to its 
annihilation. Our righteous and gentle course will not be 
instantly answered in a similar spirit. It may at first, it 
undoubtedly will, intensify the rage that already burns in the 
Southern breast, seven-fold hotter than it did aforetime. In 
this rage they will gnash upon us with their teeth, will seek 
to frighten us, by financial crises and threats of secession, 
into submission. Let us not be alarmed. Let but Wall 
Street look on and hold on, calm and cool, as Menelaus did 
when Proteus sought to elude him by assuming terrifie 
shapes and making beastly noises, and the monster now, as 
then, will become tame and humble. Our greatest danger 
is in the cowardice of the moneyed power. The Church is 
getting ready to do her part. Politics is doing hers, and 
now the third of our social forces must do hers. If she 
fails, if she whines and grows pallid, and begs her dear slave- 
holding brethren to desist, and promises Northern repentance 
and its meet works, she will only encourage them in their 
course. She can never change the course of the Republic. 
Freedom is more than trade, liberty than wealth. Our 
fathers have said so twice. We shall not fail to repeat the 
word, if it must be spoken. 

The poor slave will also burn in the hot breath of this fiery 
furnace. The master fears his slave more than he hates the 
North. He will feel the scourge of that fear. It is one of 
the necessities of tyrants that they can preserve their power, 
and even their life, only by the frequent deaths of their 
enslaved subjects. In Sicilian prisons, Neapolitan dungeons, 
Roman inquisitions, every-where, every-when, has triumphant 
sin taught us that this necessity is laid upon it. So it is 
now where this worst of sins holds completest sway. No 
dungeon of Venice or Rome or Naples ever vied with Caro- 
lina prisons or Alabama plantations in the excruciating 
cruelty which the helpless victims of their fear and hate 



ELECTION- OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 205 

receive at their hands. When the secrets of this prison- 
house shall be revealed, you will cease to wonder at the 
tortures of Messina and Palermo. No woman suffered there, 
only a few score of men. Here tenderest women suffer such 
cruelty daily, as hard-hearted heathen Rome, the most cruel 
of the ancient nations, would have shrunk from inflicting. 
Read Olmstead's late " Tour through the Back Country/ 7 
and you will find incidents of these tortures, inflicted so 
coolly and carelessly, as show them to be a common matter 
of daily and indifferent outrage. But he never saw the 
slave roasting at the stake. He never saw the fierce blood- 
hounds tearing in pieces the tender flesh of fainting women. 
He never saw, as a friend of mine did, himself once a slave- 
holder, a frantic mother torn from a nursing babe, less than 
a year old, and dragged shrieking down the public street of 
a Missouri village, by men who bore Christian names and a 
white skin, and were, not unlikely, born in Puritan New 
England, of pious parents. 

" On horror's head horrors accumulate," 

We emerge from the dungeon so full of 

"Horrid shapes and shrieks and sights unholy," 

and breathe the upper air of liberty, with the feeling of an 
angel who had escaped from Pandemonium revelry and out- 
rage into the pure society of the blessed. Alas ! unlike the 
angel, we do not leave only sinners and damned spirits be- 
hind us, rioting in their willing wickedness, but pure and 
lovely souls, pure as the spirits of the just made perfect, 
lovely as their angels, who do always behold the face of 
their Father which is in heaven : these we leave behind, 
suffering such shame, such sorrow, such anguish of body 
and of soul, as only God can relieve, only He can avenge. 

Thank God, that worse than hell shall be swept from the 
earth. The Administration may not, will not, directly, aid 



206 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

it. The party in power is forbidden to do it — rightfully, 
constitutionally forbidden. It can only be done peacefully 
and properly by themselves. It will be so done. The 
warm air of freedom gliding over all that icy region will 
relax, will dissolve these chains. The great example of 
eighteen States of the Union, voluntarily emancipating 
their slaves, or voluntarily indorsing the act by which the 
nation rescued their domain from its polluting presence, 
will not be lost upon them. They have lost the post of 
master. They will soon be willing to take that of a pupil. 
They will begin to see as they are seen. They have pom- 
pously proclaimed to the despised North, " I am rich and 
increased with goods, and have need of nothing." They 
will now see that they are " wretched, and miserable, and 
poor, and blind, and naked." They will then come to that 
state of humility which will incline them to buy of us "gold 
tried in the fire," the gold of universal emancipation, "that 
they may be rich, and white raiment," the wedding robes 
of liberty and holiness, " that they may be clothed, and that 
the shame of their nakedness do not appear." "They will 
anoint their eyes with the eye-salve " of Northern pros- 
perity, " and will see." Thus learning, thus seeing, the 
generous spirits that now pant speechless in that prison of 
silence and death will give their heart a tongue. The free, 
white, ruling South will speak everywhere, and speak one 
voice. Tokens of such coming utterance are already given. 
North Carolina has spoken through the lips of Mr. Helper 
and Professor Hedrick ; South Carolina hailed this reform, 
at its inauguration, in the persons of her Grimkes and Bris- 
bane ; and in this very canvass, Professor Lieber, late of her 
University, has boldly denounced her treason and its cause, 
and cast his vote for freedom. Kentucky and Virginia 
already pour forth consenting voices, like the volume and 
the sound of many waters, while Missouri is upon the verge 
of planting the standard of emancipation on the summit of 
its Capitol. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 207 

This revival of Jeffersonian, of Washingtonian abolitionism, 
with more than the fervor and with more than the practical 
purpose of those reformers, on their own soil and among 
their own posterity, will sweep through the masses, and 
one fire blaze in all breasts — the celestial fire of universal 
liberty. The struggles of the enslaved, their sufferings, 
their deaths for personal freedom, not infrequent and not 
powerless even now, will increase, and increase the zeal of 
their generous advocates ; and ere the hundredth anniver- 
sary of our nation's birth is reached, — the Fourth of July, 
1816, — we shall have completed the work undertaken at 
our beginning. The bell that rang out the first birthday in 
the ears of all the nations, will ring out its first centennial 
with the prophetic words inscribed upon it, " Proclaim 
Liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof" 
— no longer prophecy to be accomplished by a long and 
perilous and bloody path, but blessed, unchanging history. 

We have given it a long lease of power, brief as it may 
appear to you, in allowing four presidential terms to pass 
before it disappears. But we know that three thousand 
millions of property are not to be destroyed in an instant, 
except by a bloody uprising. We hope and pray that there 
may be no such reprisals. It may go down by a bloodless 
revolution. Garibaldi has shown how nearly bloodless an 
insurrection may be in this age of the world. Had there 
been no standing armies in Sicily and Naples, they would 
have achieved their liberty ^thout the sacrifice of a single 
life. There are no standing armies in the Slave States. A 
Garibaldi from the enslaved race may secure their libera- 
tion without the shedding of a drop of blood. God grant 
that it may be so.* 

* The statement of Mr. Buchanan, in his late Message, that the slaves 
are becoming "uneasy/' is a most remarkable confession of a most im- 
portant witness. This uneasiness exists more in the Gulf States than on 
the border. Eor the latter gets rid of its dangerous element through 



208 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

But we look more to the liberal action of the white race 
than to any violent action of the black. We shall see the 
sentiment of the States gradually changing. Then their 
policy will change. Law after law, the worst first, will 
be repealed ; until, under one grand impulse of conscience, 
they will pull down the whole fabric, and the slave shall 
stand beside his master, his free and acknowledged equal. 

All this will not take place without such commotion as 
we have not yet seen nor dreamed of. Threats of disunion, 
and probably a brief indulgence in that suicidal remedy, will 
be made by the more insane of the maniacs. We have seen 
some agitation at the North, in the last thirty years ; some 
mobs and murders have desecrated the Free States in their 
endeavors to relieve themselves from the influence alone of 
slavery. What will not that bloody power do in a life-and- 
death struggle which is now to arise in its own dominions, 
where it has held unquestioned and unlimited sway for two 
hundred years ? The war has passed from the North to the 
South, and the thirty thousand votes just cast there for lib- 
erty show that the war will not cease, come what may, fall 
who may, till that twelve millions are delivered from their 
few hundred thousand masters, and freedom of every kind, for 
every man, shall be the glad possession of the whole people. 

This must be the work of time. Yet the change is rapid 
from daybreak to dawn ; more rapid and brief from dawn to 
sunrise. And when the sun rises, darkness flees to its caves, 

the two outlets of Southern trade andthe underground railroad. These 
Northern slaves, that have been sold South because they were unman- 
ageable, are united with the superior native slaves of that section, who, 
if on the border, would escape to Canada. These violent and restless 
men, kept from liberty by a wall five hundred miles thick, will, in time, 
irr the very nature of things, rise upon their masters. These masters, 
by their madness, are tempting the insurrection. There is the fire, 
there the powder. If an explosion comes, it will come there first. God 
grant the masters may escape the terrible danger by immediate prepa- 
ration for ultimate, if not instant, emancipation. 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 209 

though a few shadows may linger among the cays till the 
midday brightness burns them up. So will it be with this 
cause. The day is breaking. A gray light streaks across 
the darkened heavens. The next presidential election will 
bring the rosy dawn that will send its warm flush athwart 
the whole horizon. The third will be the perfect sunrise. 
The fourth the noontide glory, that shall consume every ray 
of slavery blackness that has lain so thick and heavy across 
the nation's sky. 

Let us rejoice. Let us shout for joy. Oppression shall 
not always reign. Oppression has ceased to reign in its 
highest, strongest seat. It will soon abandon its lower 
thrones of State sovereignty, cast down headlong by the 
people whom it has so long deluded and betrayed. It will 
then flee from those private, domestic seats of tyranny, upon 
the multitude of which the fifteen seats of State authority 
have been erected, upon which fifteen, faithfully knit to- 
gether, the throne of their national power has been elevated. 
An aroused people will extirpate it from these obscure, but 
central seats, and the gigantic sin that swells vast to heaven, 
will flee from the earth to its native, nethermost hell. 

Let us pray for this hour ; let us labor for it in all right- 
eous and loving ways. Our real work is just begun. We 
have* only broken down a barrier that opposed our march. 
That march must yet be made. We have only compelled 
the haughty transgressors to listen. Our entreaties, our 
warnings, our encouragements are yet to be poured into the 
opened ear. We have only attained the outmost edge of 
the broad table-land of free discussion. The high land must 
yet be traveled. Remember that this deed is nothing un- 
less it bring forth fruit better than itself. The object upon 
which we must fix our eye, the prize that must be won, the 
goal that must be reached, is the abolition of slavery, the 

LIBERATION OF EVERY SLAVE. 

Let us discuss, in a spirit of prudence and liberality, every 
14 



210 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 

measure that seeks this end. Let us bring every reason 
that worldly success, humane sentiment, or religious obliga- 
tion can suggest to bear upon the hearts of their masters. 
Let us aid those who are anxious to be released from this 
relation out of the abundant wealth of the North, that they 
may not be kept from this duty by the gaunt form Of pov- 
erty staring them in the face, and certain to be their portion, 
if they strip themselves of all their inherited, though un- 
righteous possessions. Let us, at least, assist them, if they 
need, or will receive, no remuneration for the discharge of 
their duty, by providing for these emancipated brethren a 
home on free soil, which they cannot enjoy on the slave. We 
must bring our money to bear upon this sin, if we would see 
it peacefully die. Let us do it wisely, generously, speedily. 

Let us especially feel for the slave. The lot, the loss 
of the master is nothing to his. His is a hapless, horrible 
fate. Never forget him. In your morning prayers remem- 
ber him upon whom the morning breaks only to light him 
to his rewardless tasks. When gathering- round the family 
altar and the family table, pity those who have no such com- 
forts. At your evening devotions pray for those who go to 
cheerless couches, bowed down with dreadful memories and 
more dreadful fears. Remember that the Lord had these 
sufferers before Him, no less than His chosen people, when 
He said, " This is a people robbed and peeled ; they are all 
of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison-houses ; 
they are for a prey, and none delivereth ; for a spoil, and 
none saith, Restore!" Never, never forget them. They 
are your brothers and sisters. They shall stand in equal 
liberty with you, delivered by the right arm of Hinj who 
saved your fathers, and who has just cast down their leagued 
oppressors from their lofty seats. 

What a day that day of deliverance will be, — the great 
and acceptable day of the Lord, — a day sure to come ; a 
day, I believe, soon to come ! Behold that vast and beauti- 



ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 211 

ful region, from the peaceful Ohio to the sunny Gulf, from 
the swift Mississippi to the raging" Atlantic, as it now rests 
under the gloom of this awful sin. All the refinements, all 
the enterprises of civilized life, pause at its borders, or creep 
feebly through it, like solitary star-rays through midnight 
clouds. The magnificent landscape is rarely cheered with 
the flying train, rarely adorned with the lovely hamlet, the 
prosperous village, the mighty city. The church lifts but 
seldom its defiled hand to heaven, and lifts that hand only 
to point to the judgment of God on its fearful sin in compel- 
ling the bride of Christ to commit adultery with Belial. No 
school-house appears, full of the neighborhood's children, no 
farms trodden by their humble, but independent, owners ; 
no culture, prosperity, piety. The sight most frequent is 
the miserable slave toiling with barbaric implements in the 
rudest forms of menial service ; or the more miserable white 
man, degraded beneath the slave he despises, idle, intemper- 
ate, ignorant, and brutal. 

Thus stands that vast land to-day. Let the hour come 
for which we are praying and laboring, to which the great 
deed of the past week has made the grandest stride that the 
century has seen ; let but that hour come, when every man 
shall be free, and how changed the spectacle. The wilder- 
ness, that blossoms like the rose in wild fertility, shall be 
transformed into the smiling abode of free, industrious, in- 
telligent man. Railroads shall rush through every valley, 
bearing the famishing of all nations to the rich treasures 
nature has there in store for them. Beautiful roads will wind 
beside every stream, scale every mountain, pierce every for- 
est. Rich embowered cottages, such as no Northern sun nor 
soil can give, will line every pathway, will cluster in frequent 
centers, will multiply, at brief intervals, into great commu- 
nities, with the gigantic factories, and warehouses, and 
spacious stores, and crowded streets of growing cities. The 
school-house, modest or majestic, as it stands in village or 



212 TE DEEM LAUDAMUS. 

city, will be filled with the young of all families, white and 
black, as with us, unconscious of difference or prejudice ; alike 
growing in knowledge and affection. No slave-whip whis- 
tles through the resisting air, rushing down upon the shrink- 
ing flesh of saintly woman. No agonizing husbands and 
wives, mothers and babes, are dragged to the market-place, 
and there torn, husband from wife, mother from child, never 
to meet again till they appear together as witnesses on the 
stand at the bar of God against these murderers of their 
liberty, their love, their life. Xo gangs of men and women, 
silent and sad, move monotonously over the broad acres, to 
the ceaseless look and lash of the cruel overseer. Xo 
wretched hovel, with its earthen floor and heap of straw, filled 
for a few short hours with the half-starved slaves, blotches 
the lovely landscape. All these are gone, and gone forever. 

The white fields shall blossom under the free and active 
industry of every class. Comfort shall gladden every home. 
Willing labor shall garner the soil. The free and happy, 
busy and populous, wealthy and cultivated North, shall cover 
the whole land, and equal freedom and happiness, energy 
and prosperity, culture and piety, will be the possession of 
every man. Above all, the Church of Christ, the Divine 
Liberator, will point its sacred finger to the Infinite Lover 
and Redeemer of all men, to the everlasting freedom of 
heaven. In 'its walls, without distinction of color or con- 
dition, without negro pews, or negro galleries, or negro 
corners, all souls shall bow in the loving unity of " one 
Lord, one faith, one baptism," before "the one God and 
Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all" 
that love Him, equally and eternally. 

No dim and distant prophecy of millennial glory is this. 
The day is nigh at hand. It has already dawned. It shall 
speedily arise. "Surely I come quickly. Amen! Even 
so, come, Lord Jesus ! " 



LETTERS FROM CAMP 



I. TO ARMS. 



First Gathering of the States. 




Steamer Ariel, off Annapolis, ) 
Wednesday, 9 A. M., April 23, 18G1. 5 

NE always wishes to know the condition of his 
correspondent. Let me give you a crayon sketch 
of this one. On the after deck of a California 
steamer, sitting on a camp-stool, with his sheet 
of note-paper on a pocket account-book, and the book rest- 
ing on his knees, with a military cap on his head, a 
military beard on his face, and a military weapon peeping 
out of his breast pocket, putting its possessor in far greater 
peril than any real or imaginary foe, — thus sitteth the 
sketcher. His immediate surroundings are admirably adapt- 
ed to habits of reflection and composition. Crowding around 
him are soldiers of many uniforms, and many religions and 
irreligions, having two bonds of unity — fury against the 



* The three following sections contain extracts from letters written 
from the army at Washington, the Relay House, and Baltimore, dur- 
ing the first three months of the war, and published in " Zion's Her- 
ald," " Christian Advocate," and " Harper's Magazine." 

(213) 



214 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

rebels, and noisy welcomes to neighboring troops. Some 
eight or ten vessels lie near us, with troops from Rhode 
Island, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, vociferating 
their hurrahs and "tigers" across to each other in a 
most enthusiastic manner. Outside of this trampling and 
talking, singing and shouting, screaming of steam pipes 
and rattling of muskets, lie the quiet Chesapeake and its 
more quiet banks. The sun is preparing to give us a 
warm reception, whatever the citizens may give. He 
pours his sheets of flame on the bay, and it glitters in his 
radiance with charming beauty. It is a beautiful field of 
silver, about a mile wide here, but opening into an area three 
or four miles wide a little way below. The banks are low, 
yet very pleasant. The grass is green, and the trees are 
clothed in that "mist of greenness," as Tennyson so hap- 
pily describes the intermediate state between leaflessness 
and leafage. 

A War Night in Faneuil Hall. 

I have seen old Faneuil Hall under many excitements since 
my first memory of it, which, by the way, was beholding 
General Jackson shake hands with Boston dignitaries. I 
was chiefly anxious, I recollect, then to see the famous Major 
Jack Downing, and eagerly inquired of my Mentor which 
of the attendants on the General was the great Major. 
Since that childish faith was then and there broken to pieces, 
I have had my faith broken or confirmed many times by the 
sights and sounds within its walls. But Faneuil 

" saw another sight, 
When the drums beat at dead of night." 

My experience of many delectable Methodist camps had 
trained me for the enjoyment of the scene. So I lay on 
a straw mattress under the rostrum, from whence I had 
heard Webster, Choate, Parker, Sumner, Burlingame, and a 



TO ARMS. 215 

host of others thunder, and saw the sights in which then- 
speeches were culminating — the bodying forth of their airy 
nothings. Troops marching and countermarching, up stairs 
and down stairs, bands playing, men whistling or singing, 
packing and nailing boxes, shouting orders, going through 
drills, — every conceivable noise, melting into one mighty 
patriotic symphony. The grand old eagle seemed to enjoy 
the scene, — ■ 

" The fierce gray bird with a bending beak, 
With an angry eye and a startling shriek, 
Which nurses his brood where the cliff flowers blow." 

How he exulted in the daring of his Northern associates ! 
On his breast glowed the stars and stripes, and round his 
talons waved the E Pluribus Unum, not to be changed to 
Ex Uno Plura by the combined fraud and force of any or 
all the leagued oppressors on our Southern shores. Below 
the symbols of the United States stood the haughty memo- 
rials of Massachusetts sovereignty, — her Indian and his 
weapons, — and her motto, looking far from " Algerine," in 
this hour of her quick response to the call of her country. 

Opposite these, the patriotic faces of Samuel Adams, 
Washington, Hancock, and Warren, glowed with animated 
enthusiasm ; while, by a sort of prophetic inspiration, Cal- 
houn had been placed on the walls, but covered with a cloud, 
evidently nursing his wrath with difficulty, as he saw the 
formidable array to suppress his treasonable desires and 
efforts, and to give the final blow to his favorite Power as a 
ruler in the nation. 

Among the tunes were often heard, just as I hear them 
here and now, the familiar songs of the camp-meeting and 
prayer-meeting. " I amgoinghome to die no more/' "There'll 
be no more sorrow there, 7; " We're bound for the kingdom, 
Will you go to glory with me ? " mingled with America and 
Yankee Doodle, showing how great was the power of 
these melodies over the masses. 



216 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 



First War Sunday. 



That Sabbath day's journey ought to be chronicled. We 
marched through saintly Boston in the gray twilight to the 
tune of Yankee Doodle. All along the route, cannons and 
bells, bands and flags, and waving handkerchiefs, soldiers 
and crowds upon crowds, gave us a hearty hail and fare- 
well. At Springfield the crowd was immense and enthu- 
siastic. At Hartford we were told the women were all at 
home driving their sewing machines, and the men busy mak- 
ing cartridges for their troops. Not a few, however, filled 
the depot and the track to salute us. But Meriden gave us 
the heartiest welcome. All the town left their churches, 
and gathered round the depot, where they had had preaching 
and singing while waiting for us. They had also provided 
refreshments enough for five thousand persons, and plied us 
with sweetmeats and benedictions. 

New Haven and Bridgeport were equally alive and multi- 
tudinous in their enthusiasm. At the last place an incident 
occurred which strikingly, not to say grotesquely and harsh- 
ly, showed the fierce fire that glowed in every "breast. A 
man had been killed the day before while firing a salute to 
a company going to Washington. They had his body 
wrapped jn American flags, in a hearse trimmed with flags, 
and drawn by four white, dancing horses, also trimmed with 
flags. The force of the fever could go no farther. It did not 
seem to me that it ought to have gone so far. Yet the great 
crowds, the bands, cannons, bells, soldiers, and shouts, 
showed that the people did not seem to feel this novel ex- 
pression to be exceptional. 

Opening the Way to the Capitol. 

Washington, April 23, 1861. 

The Massachusetts Eighth Regiment first reached Annap- 
olis, and would have first opened the . way, solitary and 



TO AKMS. 217 

alone, to Washington, had not an accident prevented their 
landing. One of their officers informed me that when they 
reached Philadelphia they heard of the Baltimore riot, and 
the murder of their comrades. They left that city expect- 
ing to follow their predecessors on the same route. They 
prepared a corps of sappers and miners, selecting some forty 
of their most brave and dashing men for this service. These 
were to head the troops, and, upon attack, spring into the 
houses, set them on fire, and otherwise open, if possible, a 
path through the city. " As they marched down the streets 
of Philadelphia," said he, " the lowest weight of any sol- 
dier was one ton/ 7 so full of weighty matter and solid cour- 
age were they. They found, after a while, that they were 
going to Perryville, hoping to get possession of the steamer 
there that is connected with the railroad. They heard 
that the Baltimore secessionists held it, and had no doubt 
that they would have to fight to recover it. So, as 
they drew near the place, their guns were loaded, and their 
names called, to see if all were present. As the roll was 
called, one of the soldiers said, " When it is called again we 
shall not all be here to answer." Tears rolled down many 
cheeks at this remark, and at the thoughts which it revived 
of home and friends left perhaps forever, of the first real 
battle in which they were about to engage, of all the sud- 
den, strange, and terrible experiences of war. But they did 
not faint nor falter. They were children of their fathers, and 
they went forward cheerfully to the expected conflict. 

Leaving their cars about a quarter of a mile from the 
depot, they formed a line, with orders to rush upon the ene- 
my, and" force their passage into the boat at the point of the 
bayonet. They found they were as those that beat the air. 
The terrible enemy was not. They quietly took posses- 
sion of the steamer, and ran down to Annapolis, which they 
reached about two o'clock on Sunday morning, and anchored 
off the Naval Academy. 



218 LETTEES FEOM CAMP. 

Here occurred one of those puzzles which diplomacy often 
meets with. The commandant of the Naval School had heard 
that a secession steamer was coming from Baltimore to take 
possession of that spot. He had not heard of the move- 
ments of this regiment, and supposed, of course, that this 
steamer was the one promised and dreaded. On the other 
hand, General Butler had heard that the secessionists were 
already in possession of the Naval School, as well as of the 
city. A lieutenant came to the steamer to find out who they 
were. But as he did not like to reveal his position to par- 
ties of whom he was in doubt, and as General Butler did 
not choose to reveal his name and purpose, their conversa- 
tion was brief and cipherish. Soon the lieutenant said he 
must go, as a signal had been made for his return. They 
learned afterward that this signal was to be given, after a 
certain time had elapsed, so that he might escape to the 
shore, as they should then consider them secessionists, and 
open the guns of the fort upon them. The commandant, 
Captain Blake, however, finding that his lieutenant knew 
nothing, came off himself, and he and the general talked back 
and forth in the dark for some time, till gradually the} 7 be- 
gan to find out that they could trust each other. 

He then asked for help to get the Constitution into the 
bay, as it was exposed where it lay to guns from the shore. 
So the church-going, and many of them church-loving, citi- 
zens of Lynn, Marblehead, and their vicinage, worked all 
day to cut out the famous Old Ironsides. Their steamer ran 
aground in the effort, and stuck there till Tuesday morning. 
They could get no help, and had no food nor water, and some 
of them, in the fury of their thirst, drank the salt water of 
the bay. The midshipmen, on learning of their condition, 
brought water in boats to their relief. They lay here in gTeat 
peril, for there were no means of getting ashore. The peo- 
ple of Annapolis knew of their presence, and it was cur- 
rently stated that a war steamer was coming from Bal- 



TO ARMS. 219 

timore to sink them — a thing that could easily have been 
done. 

An accident happened here that was a strong confession 
of the value of religion to a man. There was only one boat 
on the steamer, and the general was afraid that one of the 
crew, or some traitor who might have smuggled himself on 
board at Perryville, would take it, and give information 
to the enemy. So he commanded two men to be put in 
charge of the boat, with orders, if any one touched it, to 
warn him off; if he did not leave instantly, to shoot him 
dead. '-'And/' said he, " if you have any praying men in 
your company, appoint them, for they will conscientiously 
obey their orders." 

On Monday morning the Boston arrived from Philadelphia 
with the Seventh Regiment, and worked nearly all day to 
get their steamer afloat, so that the Eighth Regiment, which 
had been there more than thirty hours, might have the privi- 
lege of landing first. But it was found impossible to start 
her, with their own vessel so heavily laden, and they were 
compelled to land their men first. Then they drew the 
Maryland from her long anchorage, and both of the regi- 
ments found rest and refreshment in the pleasant quarters 
of the Academy. 

Annapolis was my first acquaintance with a slavehold- 
ing city, and of persons held in slavery. The place looked 
as if cursed by the crime it hugged to its breast. With 
admirable opportunities for growth, with a harbor and 
shores that would be filled with enterprise and taste were 
it not for this crime, the capital of this freest of the Slave 
States, is as shabby, mean, and crowded as the dirtiest 
quarters of the Xorth End. I had quite a long conversa- 
tion with some of the citizens. They had evidently ex- 
perienced a new sensation. They had learned well the 
lesson of submission to slavocrats, and as one, who was 
with me, a Unionist from Kentucky, boasted of the number 



220 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

of slaves that he owned, they seemed to revere him as 
a superior being. But General Butler had given them a 
new idol to fear and to worship. And they responded as 
meekly and readily to my Massachusetts talk as they 
did to that of the Kentucky slaveholder. They listened 
almost reverently as I spoke of those terrible bugbears, 
Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison. Do not imagine that 
there was any especial courage in me. I had on a sub- 
military rig, and they knew that five to seven thousand 
men were less than a mile off, eager to avenge so much 
as the mere nose-pulling of a Northern soldier. They had 
learned that there was a North, and that she had strength 
enough to do as she pleased, even under the eaves of the 
Maryland Capitol. 

As the troops marched out to Washington, the different 
effect of their presence on the inhabitants was noticeable. 
The whites looked mad or scared, according- to their social 
position, chiefly scared, and the blacks looked glad out of the 
eyes, though their lips were discreetly sealed. As we left the 
city, they began to be more free in the expression of their 
feelings. About two miles out, a colored family on a lonely 
plantation waved their handkerchiefs and cheered vociferous- 
ly. The soldiers in response cheered lustily for the Union, 
and even kissed their hands to them in their enthusiasm. One 
old colored woman was in the Senate Chamber a day or two 
ago selling cakes and pies. One of the officers of the fa- 
mous Sixth Regiment asked her what she thought of these 
times. "Why," she said, "you seem to us just like our 
Lord Jesus. He came down of His own accord to suffer 
and die to save us. And you also come to suffer and to 
die to deliver us." The piety of the old sister was not 
very much shocked by the analogy ; I doubt if yours will 
be. Tears stood in the eyes of the officer as he told me 
her remark. He thought of those who had already died for 
this cause in Baltimore. 



TO ARMS. 221 



Camp in the Capitol. 

What kind of a place do you imagine a camp to be ? Some- 
thing rural and rustic, I doubt not. Shady trees, running 
streams, green, waving fields, with tents nestling together, 
and soldiers with their environments, adding the life of hu- 
manity to that of nature. You can hardly take into account 
the march of improvement in making up such an opinion. You 
forget how we have improved our ecclesiastical camps from 
three or four stakes, and a sheet stretched over them, to the 
luxurious tents and dwellings of the Vineyard and Hamilton. 
Even so have military encampments caught the spirit of the 
age. And so we tabernacle to-day not as Aaron in the wil- 
derness, but as his successors in the days of Solomon. Our 
camp is in the most sumptuous edifice on the continent, 
one of the most magnificent in the world. Our soldiers sleep 
under the splendid paintings and bas-reliefs of the Rotun- 
da, or between the gray marble pillars of the old Repre- 
sentative Hall. The echoes of the voices of the heroic past, 
from Washington to John Quincy Adams, fill their souls 
with high inspirations. The officers lie on beautiful pave- 
ments of many colors, none the softer though for their vel- 
vety patterns, and lounge on crimson chairs and sofas, 
reveling before the battle in the rewards which usually fol- 
low only daring and danger. The fragrance of blossoming 
trees, and the music of bands of birds, salute the senses, 
not always unmingled with what Charles Lamb calls "the 
only manly scent, ,; that of tobacco, and what boys think 
the only manly music, that of other two-legged and gay- 
appareled bands. 

The glitter of muskets, the blare of drums, and 

" Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds," 

the gay or sober uniforms, the even step of marching thou- 
sands, that revivifies the celebrated Yirgilian line (changing 



222 LETTERS EROM CAMP. 

" quadrupedante " to " bipedante "), as it shakes the dusty 
earth with its pulsing foot ; these are certainly unwonted 
experiences for an American city. The " putrem campum" 
of that verse is exceedingly appropriate here. A more dis- 
integratable soil, that professed to be a soil, I never saw. 
I can understand now how this city is able to almost con- 
stantly kick up such a dust as fills the eyes, ears, and mouths 
of the whole land. The winds here are all simooms, and the 
political storms are adapted to the climactic ones — of the 
earth, earthy. 

There are probably more soldiers to-day in Washington 
than were ever gathered before in the same area in this 
country. And yet it is but a handful to the Parisian armies, 
and to what may be collected here or elsewhere ere this 
great rebellion and its greater cause are crushed forever. 
They are constantly coming. A thousand entered at nine 
o'clock last evening ; another thousand at two o'clock this 
morning, their spirit-stirring music stirring spirits, and bod- 
ies, too, in a manner more stimulating than agreeable. 

Notwithstanding the numbers of troops here, probably not 
less than twenty thousand, including the active militia of 
the District, the great buildings, where many of them 
quarter, are not overcrowded. Three thousand troops oc- 
cupy the Capitol, and yet it looks as empty as a New York 
church of a Sunday afternoon. Many times that number 
could easily be packed into its immense halls, passages, and 
lobbies. 

This building, where the nation's hopes and fears so anx- 
iously and so justly center, is held by soldiers from New 
York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. These three States 
stand together in the Capitol to maintain our liberty to-day, 
as they stood fourscore years ago to inaugurate it. It is 
more than a happy coincidence that the magnificent struc- 
ture, which embodies the sovereignty and glory of our nation, 
should be intrusted to the watch-care of these ancient and 



TO ARMS. 223 

constant allies. The most dangerous, and hence most hon- 
orable, post in it is occupied by the Massachusetts Sixth, 
who so nobly won the prize in their brav'e and rapid march 
to its defense. 

I escaped to the elegant Congressional Library, hoping to 
avoid the din of arms, and throats, and drums that pervades 
every other part of the Capitol. Vain hope ! The tremen- 
dous rattle of innumerable drums, as it seems to the drums 
of my ears, follows me here. From the lovely and usually 
quiet grounds in front of the Capitol, it arises like the rat- 
tling of hammers on the rivets of half a dozen engine boil- 
ers. If you want to know how military sounds sound when 
concentrated into an army, and void of fife and bugle, visit 
the " Novelty Works/ 7 or any other locomotive factory, and 
listen to the melody aforesaid. The poor birds, who were get- 
ting up a fine concert of their own, succumb, and hide their 
ears behind their wings. If my composition partakes of 
this intense rattling and ringing, consider it all the more 
military, and hence the more popular. 

Camp at the Relay. 

Camp Essex, May 16, 1861. 

We have reached it at last. 

" My high blown pride 
At length breaks under me." 

A greater than Jefferson the Little, even the bowed and ach- 
ing octogenarian of Washington has issued his edict, and 
here we are. No more lounging on velvet chairs, no more 
looking through plate-glass, between bronze window frames 
and marble pillars, across the placid Potomac to Alexandria, 
and, with the mind's eye, to Richmond. We are on a re- 
treat. We have left for the North. 

Our change from our Capitol quarters was most willingly 
made. Like most persons in such places, we found our- 



224 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

selves sorely afflicted with the rich man's disease — nothing 
to do. So, when the order came yesterday to march, the 
soldiers gladly fled to arms and knapsacks. And well they 
might ; for the real camp, which we have reached, is as 
much before the Tain pomp and glory of the one we have 
left as dear, divine nature is ahead of hard and heartless 
art. If all pride has such a fall as this, it should not feel 
hurt at the operation. 

Leaving our marble quarters, marching down the superb 
staircase, whose panels Leutze, or his successors, will hard- 
ly be able to fill with a more glorious picture than that then 
passing before them, we took the cars, and were dropped on 
the side of the hill, about half a mile from the Relay House. 

The next morning the brow of the hill was appropriated 
to our use ; and here, in the soft May air of Maryland, the 
white canvas town of Camp Essex "rose like an exha- 
lation." The camp is not arranged precisely according to 
" regulation," yet nearly enough to give an idea of the ideal 
law, which in the army, as elsewhere, is fully realized but 
rarely. Close to the trees is a row of tents — the depots of 
the commissary and quartermaster, and the hospital quarters. 
The next row is that of the colonel and his staff; next, 
the tidy quarters of the major ; then those of the surgeon 
and his assistants. The yellow flag of the surgeon is fol- 
lowed by the white one of the chaplain, with whom tents 
the paymaster. Arms, gold, and the gospel seldom come into 
such close conjunction as they do in this tent. At night 
the chaplain sleeps between a box of rifles and a box of 
money. The third and last of the official rows is that of 
the captains. At right angles to these are the streets of the 
privates, more closely built, and more densely populated, 
than those of the officers. Yet crowded into these tents 
are many who in wealth, culture, and position are fully the 
equals of their military superiors. The son of an ex-senator 
of the United States, and the son of a " Bell-Everett" elec- 



TO ARMS. 225 

toral candidate — himself a Boston lawyer — do duty with 
the musket, each enjoying his undivided fifteenth part of 
the canvas ten-footer with as worthy fishermen and shoe- 
makers, carpenters and sailors, for comrades. 

Our flank companies are representatives of the flanks of 
the State — Pittsfield on the left, and Salem on the right. 
Next to the brilliant Salem Zouaves come the Marblehead 
fishermen. Captain Knott's Marbleheaders deserve spe- 
cial mention, as the first in all the land to respond to the 
call of the President. The very next morning after the sum- 
mons left Washington, his company marched from home 
through a storm of driving sleet, and Faneuil Hall welcomed 
them first of all to the service of patriotism, with which it is 
identified. As they entered its honored walls, bound on a 
grander mission than any to which their fathers had respond- 
ed, the "stone must have cried out of the wall, 'and the 
beam out of the timber have answered it," in honor of the 
perpetual valor of this most patriotic of towns. In no less 
than three of the historic pictures which cover the walls of 
the rotunda are representatives of Marblehead. The new 
pictures which shall reproduce this holier war will not be 
without her heroic presence. Beverly and Gloucester — 
wonderfully given to fun, frolic, and letter-writing — occupy 
the next street. Loquacious Lynn and conservative New- 
bury port share the last two streets. It would never have 
done to place all the argumentative shoemakers together : 
there would be no knowing how, with rifles and revolvers in 
their hands, they might have concluded to carry on their 
discussions. So Conservatism and Progress are hitched 
together ; and the staid bearers of the name of Cushing, 
and the lively followers of the senatorial Crispin, balanced 
each other. Outside of the last street is Pittsfield, look- 
ing north and west, protecting the camp on its most assail- 
able side. So seven hundred men are housed within four 
and twenty hours after leaving the Capitol. 
15 



226 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

The view from our camp is charming. At our feet lies a 
narrow valley, through which creeps the slumberous Patapsco, 
covering its face with willows. It has been hard at work 
- miles above driving mills and factories, and naw enjoys its 
release from labor : only temporary, however, is this recess, 
for it is soon caught again, driven into sluice-ways, and 
broken upon wheels, only finding lasting peace when it 
melts into the bosom of the placid Chesapeake. Just be- 
neath us nestles the little village of Elk Ridge Landing — 
once a port of entry and a haven for ships. But the wash- 
ings from the hills have choked, up the channel, and choked 
off the trade. Now it seems devoted to the imbibition of 
whisky, of which, judging from the number of shops, enough 
is sold to reopen navigation, were it judiciously applied to 
that purpose. From the hill-top the village has a pleasant 
aspect, with its two churches, one embowered in trees, and 
the other standing in a field of blossoming clover, the white 
tombstones casting a moonlight luster on the green mounds 
beneath. But these are almost the only adornments of the 
village. The main street is a collection of wood and brick 
houses, with no sidewalks, and but few gardens and trees. 

The walks around the camp are as delightful as its out- 
look. Deep ravines, heavily shaded, cover the northern 
and western sides. Through each of these trickles a tiny 
brook dancing down to the river. Threading the way 
through these glens, one enters the upland, which opens 
into varied vistas. Above the viaduct the Patapsco runs 
through a deep gorge, scattered along which are mills and 
the dwellings of the workmen. The summits are crowned 
with the dwellings of the landholders and their tenants. 
Looking from these eminences the landscape spreads out in 
those softly undulating lines which rich soils only can ex- 
hibit. A hard, thin soil requires mines of imported wealth, 
and generations of culture, to give it character. But this 
rich earth enriches everything. It thickens and deepens the 



TO AEMS. 227 

foliage of the trees, softens the hard edges of the hills, and 
gives to the whole landscape a royal sweep and fullness. 

Smoke Before the Fire. 

The flames begin to shoot forth along the whole border — 
at Harper's Ferry, Western Virginia, Cairo, and St. Louis. 
This great seam in our Ship of State, that has been stuffed 
and stuffed with tow and pitch by ecclesiastical and political 
calkers for a couple of generations, is on fire. The flames, 
long pent within the vessel, have reached the surface, and, 
naturally enough, break out in its most inflammable part. 
Soon, perchance, they will lick the stars in their mad fury. 
" The strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, 
and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench 
them." There is no blaze here yet — only intense and suffoca- 
ting smoke, in which all things are hidden. We dwell where 
Dame Rumor has her seat ; but this lady has always proved 
her close relationship to the father of lies, and never more in- 
disputably than in the present smoke, preliminary, perhaps, to 
that of battle. One hour she positively declares that twenty- 
five thousand secessionists are within a day's march of the 
capital, and intend to storm it before the next nightfall. 
The next, she declares the troops at Alexandria are verify- 
ing Scripture, and fleeing when no man pursueth ; that 
others are also hasting away from Harper's Ferry. So she 
flies up and down these streets, choking our ears as the dust 
does our mouths, and with equally unserviceable stuff. The 
fact is, we shall never know anything certain about the re- 
bellious section until we march an army of observation, as 
well as of occupation, into its midst. The seceders love 
darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. 
They keep up all kinds of contrary stories to delude the 
government, and especially the North. They wisely adapt 
their compound to the exciting of our fears and the allaying 



228 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

of our vigilance. So they say four hundred thousand men will, 
before midsummer, pour on Washington ; or within a week 
the Confederate flag will float on the Caoitol, if they conde- 
scend to allow it to stand. Then, having played the buga- 
boo enough, they pretend it is all practical joking. They 
have hardly any troops anywhere ; only thirty thousand or 
so in all the Confederacy. Eichmond is unprotected, and 
" only a miracle " can save that city from the government 
troops. I fear the Greeks bringing these telegraphic gifts. 
They must be watched and guarded from nearer heights than 
those of Arlington. We must arise and go down into the 
South country, and see for ourselves, and, if need be, feel 
in ourselves their hostile preparations. 

The letter-writers and telegraph operators are in a dubious 
state as it respects matters in the Cabinet, as they are in 
respect to those in the South. Paul very happily describes 
the whole class in that keen sketch of the bustling know-noth- 
ing wise men of his day, of all skeptical days : " Ever striv- 
ing and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." 
The Vailed Prophet never kept his face more closely con- 
cealed than President Lincoln, General Scott, and Secretary 
Cameron do the face of military affairs. It is a fine time 
for our spiritualist friends to bring forth their mediums. 
Enormous prices would be paid by public journals for reli- 
able facts that are undoubtedly transpiring in Virginia and 
the southernmost States — for more important facts that 
are as certainly settled and partially embodied in act in the 
brains of the antagonist leaders — rebels and patriots. How 
'•'stale, flat, and unprofitable" that folly looks beside these 
opportunities and urgencies for its existence ! How fortu- 
nate it is that these silly women laden with lusts, and sillier 
men more heavily laden that lead them captive, have no such 
insight ! It is the glory of God to conceal a thing ; and 
this divine glory is partially shared by those who, in the 
exigencies of State, share also in his sovereignty. 



LETTERS FROM CAMP. 



II. SLAVERY DYING. 




The Look of the Land. 

Camp Essex, May 16. 
AM sitting on the ground, in the door of my tent, 
like Abraham ; like him, too, on a hill country, 
from which a large and lovely prospect opens. 
Like him, yet again, as our brethren in this vicin- 
ity would undoubtedly suggest if they sat beside me, I am 
surrounded by the patriarchal institution, to whose preser- 
vation they are ready to sacrifice liberty, civilization, Chris- 
tianity, every good and perfect gift of God. Not very near 
is this institution, much less is it armed, as in his day, for the 
rescue of its master or his kindred from these invaders from 
the north country. The peaceful scenes over which his eye 
moved in Oriental quietude are before me, though not in the 
foreground. The peaceful sounds that crept into his ears 
are far from filling mine. The drums rattle around me. 
The loud orders of the officers, drilling their companies, 
break clear and shrill over the drum-beats, while the hurrahs 
of other troops welcoming their marching comrades, and 
the sharp sound of the musketry, or the reverberating roar 
of the cannon, of yet others who are practicing themselves 

(229) 



230 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

and their guns, mingle with the more peaceful chattering 
of theGibeonites of the camp in their bustling service for 
the wants of the body, and are all often encompassed in the 
scream of the locomotive, and the roar of his train — a wel- 
come proof and prophecy that the victories of peace are not 
only greater, but more lasting, than those of war. These 
shall perish, but those shall endure. We can add without 
irreverence, " Yea, these " signs and weeds of war " shall 
all wax old as doth a garment ; as a vesture shalt thou " 
Prince of Peace, " change them, and they shall be changed ; " 
but the years and the triumphs of peace shall have no end. 
I trust they will be made more melodious in expression. 
Why cannot the movements of machinery be made as silent 
as those of nature ? Why may they not sing as delightful- 
ly to our dull ear as the stars did to the keener sense of 
Messieurs Shakspeare and Addison ? This hurly-burly 
of peace and war has suddenly ceased for a moment, and 
blessed Nature, the beloved disciple of her Creator, puts her 
arms of love and beauty around the distracted soul. 

As I look out over the glittering white roofs and stacked 
bayonets of the camp, my eyes roam over as delightful a 
bit of scenery as ever enticed them from the drudgery of the 
pen. A valley lies beneath them, covering some two or 
three square miles, if its grateful irregularity could be 
Quakerized into such rectangular abominations as a square. 
Through it lazily strolls the river, gladly indulging its 
Southern indisposition to work, after the involuntary servi- 
tude into which some avaricious Yankees had forced it, just 
above the viaduct, for the sake of running their dirty and 
noisy nail factories. 

Our Southern brethren do not believe in compelling any- 
thing to work except the negro. With great flourishes about 
the advantages to him of compulsory labor, and the dire 
effects of emancipation in letting- loose upon their commu- 
nity a mass of idle men and women, they join a most hearty 



SLAVERY DYING. 231 

indifference to the idleness of all other creatures, human, 
animal, and vegetable. 

An amusing instance of the unconscious power of this 
feeling occurred yesterday. * A friend residing here, whose 
pleasant acquaintance I have made, speaking of a piece of 
meadow which was being devoted to the raising of osier, or 
basket willow, said the owner was getting twenty-five dol- 
lars an acre per annum for the meadow, and " didn't have 
to work it at all." That last consideration would have 
never occurred to a Northern man. This is one of the most 
important railroad centers in the country — trains passing 
and stopping almost every hour of the day and night ; and 
yet I have not seen half a dozen teams in its streets, except 
those in the service of the troops, during my three days' 
residence. Here are three thousand men hungry for deli- 
cacies, and willing to pay for them, and not a farmer's cart 
has entered the camp. A half dozen black and white loafers 
with little baskets of cakes and pies, a wagon or two larger 
capitalists, with beer and oranges, are the whole trading force 
extemporized by our necessities. The exhibition day of a 
country academy in a Northern State develops tenfold more 
business activity than these multitudinous trains and troops 
can bring to life here. Great masses of the fat earth slumber 
in the sun. Many fine acres of grain and grass gladden 
my sight, or would gladden it, did I not think that the eye 
of the Holy Spirit was fixed on these same fields and their 
owners and tillers. How plainly His solemn tones sounded 
in my ear as He speaks to these transgressors, " Go to now, 
ye rich men; weep and howl for your miseries that shall 
come upon you. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have 
reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, 
crieth ; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered 
into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." That Lord of Sab- 
aoth, the Lord of hosts, is marshaling His hosts for battle. 
May He not be compelled to employ them in the punishment 



232 LETTEES FROM CAMP. 

of these defrauders, but inay they speedily give unto their 
servants that which is just and equal. " Behold, the Judge 
standeth at the door." 

I must acknowledge the fields look very lovely, whatever 
the mode by which they are cultivated, and are satisfactory 
because they are expressive of industry, even if unpaid. On 
some of their knolls, hidden in the already deep foliage, 
stand the cosy farm-houses, with their slave quarters, like 
the corn-barns and smoke-houses of Northern farmers, cud- 
dling round the back door, near enough to bring in the corn- 
cakes without their getting- cold by the way, and far enough 
off to keep up the idea that they are a kind of distinct order 
of beings — a notion which the white man in this region so 
sedulously and so foolishly cultivates. The slaves are 
housed, in location and in the style of their dwelling, about 
half way between their master and his other cattle. They 
have about the same position in the fancies with which he 
feeds his brain — a sort of half-way house between a white 
man and a fine horse. 

Around this lazy yet lovely valley rise hills like the one 
where I am writing, though usually unoccupied, and either 
covered with wild woods or scarred with brown barren 
patches that have evidently been scratched by the slave's 
plow till they have refused to respond to such forced en- 
treaties, and were then abandoned by their idle owners to 
an unnatural desolation. But the gay sunlight makes them 
pleasant to look upon at this distance, and they agreeably 
diversify the deep green of the rolling meadow and more 
rolling forest, among which they lie. 

If I rise up, and walk or ride through the land, I can but 
see what Lot saw when he lifted up his eyes, that it is 
" well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord, 
like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar. 7 ' Is it 
not in other respects like the land Lot saw ? Does not 
God see the weary bands that have often moved, hand- 



SLAVERY DYING. 233 

cuffed and chained together, along these* roads, marching 
to the hotter fires of a more Southern hell ? Does He not 
hear the voice of lustful command, of ferocious rage, of the 
blasphemous auctioneering of sacred woman, and lovely 
children, and Christian men, made in His image and regen- 
erated with His grace ? Does not His ever-listening ear hear 
these brutal sounds of tyrannic passion as they go up through 
this soft and palpitating air ? A Maryland gentleman, once 
a slaveholder, told me that he heard the high sheriff of one 
of her counties, after one of these human auctions, say, 
" Lloyd Garrison never talked half bad enough about us. 
I am surprised that the earth does not open and swallow us 
up." Has not the Creator said of this and more Southern, 
and probably even more sinful soil, " Because the cry of 
Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very 
grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have 
done altogether according to the cry of it which is come 
unto me ; and if not, I will know.' 7 He is making inquisi- 
tion for blood. Who shall be able to stand ? 

I rejoice to see tokens of the departure of this cloud of 
darkness and death from this fair land. The rays of uni- 
versal liberty are shooting through Maryland. They gladden 
with their novel radiance the mountains and valleys of Vir- 
ginia. See the vote for the Union just cast here — the 
Union with an anti-slavery North, and under an anti-slavery 
government. See the new governor of Virginia, his asso- 
ciates, and the whole animus of his government. Kan- 
sas, too, stands tiptoe on those misty mountain-tops. Mis- 
souri has dethroned Satan from his usurped seat there. 
Here, too, is the light descending. The active complicity, 
or, at the best, supine indifference of the wealthy, the fear 
and feebleness of the working classes, the cowardice of the 
Church, and the cruelty of the State, are rapidly coming to 
a perpetual end. One can hardly conceive the change which 
has been already wrought here since the possession of its 



234 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

territories by the ^armies of an anti-slavery government. Its 
citizens begin to breathe freely, and even talk freely. Soon 
will healthful agitation breezes blow, and the work of regen- 
eration be begun, never to stop till the blessing of perfect 
love to God and every man shall universally prevail. 
'• Behold how brightly breaks the morning." 

How Slaves Talk. 

It is quiet and peaceful here now, and I will avail myself of 
the brief interregnum to post the book of my experience and 

observation on the great matter which has kindled this great 
fire — the merchandise of the bodies and souls of men. 

I am like one who should discourse wisely on all the cur- 
rents, storms, and other grand phenomena of the ocean, 
when he had only stood on the rocks at Nahant, had seen 
the waves roll in on a pleasant day, and had thrown his 
eyes over the modest sheet that lies at his feet. I have 
only touched the edge of the great gulf of slavery, that 
sweeps for thousands of miles beyond me, with its terrific 
storms of last and ferocity, its immeasurable depths of 
despair and dread, its awful, unutterable blackness of dark- 
ness. I walk along the beach, gather a few of its pebbles, 
listen to the solemn dash of its cold and cruel waves, and 
look out with wearied eyes on the gloomy expanse, as it 
spreads itself, southward and westward, myriads of miles, 
in a horror of great darkness. 

The first person that I ever saw in slavery was at An- 
napolis. She was a pleasant, modest girl of ten or twelve 
summers. Her name was Mary. I thought how appropriate 
that the name of the mother of my Lord should be given to 
this poor, despised girl, whom somebody pretended to own ; 
whom they could sell in the market-place, and subject to 
all unutterable horrors that overhang the future of these in- 
nocent maidens. Had slavery existed in Judea, the mother 



SLAVEBY DYIXG. 235 

of Christ would have been a slave. For He must stand at 
the bottom of humanity that He might embrace it. In fact, 
he is asserted to have occupied this place. If the pro- 
slavery divines are right, in pressing out of measure the 
word " servant" in the letters of Paul, and if dov'/.o; refers 
in all cases to slaves, then Christ was a slave ; for Paul 
says, " He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon 
Him the form of a slave." I trust the poor slaves find 
comfort in that text, when they are drenched through and 
through with the pratings of preachers as to the duties of 
servants. 

I suppose, if I had visited Havana, I should have heard 
my black brother called Jesus. I wish these man-ser- 
vants, had this name. He who took their place would be 
glad to comfort them with His human title. The nearest 
we can come to it is Mary, and so I am glad they have the 
sense of kinship with Him which that name confers. But 
yesterday I dined with a slaveholder, a member of our 
church, who owned his cook, — and a very fine cook she 
was, too, judging from the dinner, — who was also blessed 
with this sacred name. 

The 'name of John Brown, which so many good men of 
Xew England have not yet reverenced as they will, and the 
cause in which he is yet to be copied by this nation, and 
for which he laid down his life, find respectful hearers in 
the midst of this people, that have sat so long in darkness. 
But the other night, after a pleasant prayer meeting in the 
village church, quite a number of the members stood at the 
cross roads, ■ and discoursed on this subject and on this 
hero. They knew him here. They said he traveled through 
this section quite extensively the summer before his death. 
One of them, a blacksmith, said that his horse was shod 
at his shop. He called himself a Baptist preacher, and had 
trusses for sale. As hernia, I have been told, is a very 
common disease with the slaves, this business ffave him 



236 LETTETS FROM CAMP. 

fine opportunities for making their acquaintance. He spoke 
freely against slavery, and was very ready with the Scrip- 
ture in his discussions with the people. These last charac- 
teristics were marks of the man, no less than the former, by 
which he sought to relieve them in their physical weakness, 
and, at the same time, to fill their ears with the glad tidings 
that the year of jubilee had come. He died without the 
sight, yet he saw it by faith, and was glad. 

The whites, as a body, ignore the blacks altogether. A 
good brother from Virginia told me, in Washington, he could 
not look upon them as the same order of beings with him- 
self. He was perfectly honest, and, I am afraid, spoke 
frankly what yet abides powerfully in many breasts in New 
England. They carry this sentiment a little further here 
than in New England, though they only carry it to its logi- 
cal issue. They say, if of a different species of humanity, 
radically, perpetually, then of a lower, as is apparent by 
their history and condition. If of a lower, then they are 
the servants of the higher. If divinely appointed for servi- 
tude, where's the harm in slavery, per se ? Now, we can- 
not cure this brother's idea as to slavery, until we pluck 
the tap-root of caste and prejudice from ourselves. We 
must first cast the beam out of our own eye, and then we 
can see clearly to cast the mote out of our brother's eye. 

This is the common feeling here. Hence they talk flip- 
pantly about the blacks not being able to take care of them- 
selves — not desiring freedom — not being as well off when 
free as when enslaved — and much other white trash, 
which goes for good common sense in this section of the 
country. I thought I would go to the fountain head, and 
see if the waters tasted the same there. I would apply a 
little of Baconianism to the problem. So I asked the slaves 
and their free kindred themselves what they thought in these 
matters ? How easy it is for a child to confound a philoso- 
pher, if the child has common sense and the wise man has 



SLAVERY DYING. 237 

not ! I do not suppose all the gentlemen I have talked with 
on this subject — and they have not been a few — have con- 
versed with as many of their colored neighbors, and in some 
cases, as I have been told by themselves, blood relations, 
on these vital questions, in all their lives, as I have talked 
with in the last forty days. They are regular Aristotelians 
on this subject of inquiry. They shut themselves up in their 
own exclusive Caucasian conceit, and theorize as to the 
state of feeling in their neighbors, with whom they never 
honestly converse. 

Two interesting proofs of this occurred here but this 
week. I was visiting at one of the elegant seats surround- 
ing our camp. The subject of slavery came up. The lady 
of the house was in great fear of insurrections in the Cotton 
States — the gentleman laughed at her fears. ''Slaves 
wouldn't take their liberty if it was offered them,'' he said. 
He " tried it once." " Who will take care of the picka- 
ninnies when they are sick?" says Juno. "Who will give 
me a dollar and a horse to ride to town if I am free/'" says 
Jupiter. So the king of gods and men, and his ox-eyed 
queen, " sor or uxor que Jovis," have their ears bored through. 
and well hung with brass pendants, and become bond ser- 
vants forever to a lank, brown, strutting, tobacco-chewing 
lot of humans. (The gentleman aforesaid is not of this 
class. He is a Unionist and a non-slaveholder, having manu- 
mitted the "gods of Greece'' in spite of their protestations.) 
How changed from those divinities who shook the world 
with their nod, and who sat in calm authority over the great 
Trojans and greater Greeks and Komans, in their long, event- 
ful history ! I thought I would hunt up some of these gods 
and goddesses, and if I did not worship at their feet, I would 
at least inquire reverently as to their feelings on the matter 
of freedom and slavery. 

The next day I sat in the woods reading, when Jupiter 
came alone: disguised as an old black man, with a basket on 



238 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

his arm and a staff in his hand. Having- been taught in 
Grecian mythology, I detected the deity in spite of the dis- 
guise. I addressed him respectfully. He was complacent 
and conversible. I asked him his name. He had assumed 
for the present that of John Diggs. 

" Are you a slave ? " 

" No, sir." 

" Have you ever been ? " 

" Yes, sir — till I was thirty odd years old." 

" How did you get your freedom ? " 

"My mistress gave it to me at her death." 

" How long have you been free ? " 

" Some fifteen or twenty years." 

" Well, I understand you free blacks are not half as well 
off as the slaves. That is true, isn't it ? " 

" No, sir ; I live better than I ever did when a slave." 

" But they say you won't work — you are all lazy." 

" They won't give us a chance, sir. They don't like to 
encourage the free negro, and so they hire slaves or the 
Irish, and let us starve. We would work as heartily as 
anybody if they would hire us." 

" But weren't you happier when a slave ? You had 
enough to eat and drink then, and wherewithal to be 
clothed." 

" I didn't have any more than I do now ; and, then, now 
when I sit down to my dinner and supper, I don't have 
somebody come blustering and swearing round the door, 
swinging his whip and flogging me away to any kind of 
hard work, though ever so tired. Ah, sir, I'm a great deal 
happier eating my poor supper nowadays, with my wife 
and chil'n, than I ever was when a slave." 

" Have you any relations in slavery ? " 

" All my brothers and sisters." 

"Where?" 

" In Prince George's County, sir." 



SLAVERY DYING. 239 

" They don't wish to be free, do they ? " 

" Yes, sir, every slave does." 

"You must be mistaken. A good many gentlemen have 
told me that they don't want to be free." 

" I would like to have them offer the slaves their liberty." 

" But what makes you want to be free ? " 

" Why, sir, you know, when a boy's about thirteen years 
old, he feels as he'd like to be his own master, and the feel- 
ing don't grow any less as he grows older." 

So ended my catechism and his replies. The twinkle of 
his eyes, as he told of his happiness over the scanty supper 
table, and the passion of boys for freedom, spoke far more 
than his lips. I asked him if he went to meeting. 

" 0, yes, I've been a Methodist for most forty years." 

" Why don't you go to the church in the village ? " 

"0, sir, 'pears as the white folks don't like to have us 
worship with them, and so we have to have a house of our 
own." 

" Well, religion is a good thing, isn't it ? " 

" Yes, sir, sweeter than honey, sweeter than sugar, better 
than coffee, sir." 

I could appreciate that climax after forty days' drinking of 
camp coffee. I was glad to find that Jupiter had experienced 
religion, and become a humble and happy Christian. This 
war shows that Mars has met with a change also. I have 
talked with not a few blacks, and find but one sentiment. 
One old man, with but one leg, said he thought the war was 
for liberty. 

" Liberty for whom?" I asked. 

"For all of us, white and black." 

I asked him if he would fight in the war. 

" Yes," he answered, " as much as he could with his 
one leg." 

At Washington I asked a waiter similar questions. He 
was free, had been born a slave, bought himself for six hun- 



240 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

dred dollars ; his wife and children were } T et slaves, and 
were sold from him to Tennessee. 

I asked why he was so foolish as to work hard and raise 
money to buy himself. Everybody here said the slaves 
were better off than the free blacks. 

" 0, sir," said he, " I wanted to lie down massa and get 
up massa ! " 

" Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," as these 
supercilious whites esteem their colored brethren, "has God 
ordained strength, that He may still the enemy and the 
avenger." 

The Carrolltox Manor. 

As we leave Ellicot's Mills we enter the broad, handsome 
turnpike from Baltimore to Frederick. This is the finest road 
I have seen in this country ; it is the only fine one in this 
vicinity. None handsomer, no one as handsome, goes out 
of Boston. It is a hundred feet' broad, running directly 
west from Baltimore for nine miles, with undeviating stead- 
fastness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. 
Nine miles out it winds round to the river to accommodate 
Ellicot's Mills, and then, going up to the high rolling lands 
it had abandoned for a moment, it proceeds on, as wide, 
hard, and straight as before. "We entered upon this part 
of our journey with some misgivings. We had left pretty 
much all the Unionism of the section behind us. The turn- 
pike gate seemed to have over it the inscription over Dante's 
Inferno : " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Nev- 
ertheless Dante did not abandon his hope, nor did success 
abandon him. So I entered the infernal region, where scenes 
even more horrible than those that met his eye, often meet 
the eye of Him who rules over this, as well as the nether 
hell, for here is crime, not punishment alone, and crime 
against the innocent and holy children of God. 

I heard some deeds worse than any which he records, but 



SLAVERY DYING. 241 

I dare not put them in print. What they must be, you may 
imagine, when I say that his medieval frankness, not to 
say coarseness of speech, and his wonderful imagination 
have not conceived of scenes of barbarism, which men coolly 
spoke of as having been attempted by the present occupant 
of the grandest of these estates — the grandson of the signer 
of the Declaration. Nothing very marked or different from 
other places attracts you as you enter this Inferno. 

The land lies very pleasant to the eyes — great fields 
stretch out before you. The trees gather often into clusters, 
and expand at times in grand forests ; the corn, grass, clover, 
and cattle, and the human crop that raise or tend these, 
meet your eyes. A slumbering stillness is in the air. Only 
here and there a house is seen ; not half a dozen in half a 
dozen miles. The houses of the proprietors are generally 
situated a mile or two from the road, in the center of their 
farms, and reached by a wagon path across the fields. The 
quarters of the negroes are alike hidden. The fields look 
as if of capacity for extraordinary culture, but are poorly 
tilled. One or two places are evidently well cared for. The 
one that seems the most like a Northern place is Mr. Ham- 
mond's, an ex-member of Congress, and a strong Union man, 
almost the only one, as far as I could learn, in the region. 

The Carroll estate comprises twelve thousand acres. The 
turnpike runs for miles across it. One piece of woods is 
three miles wide. This will give some idea of a plantation, 
though it is but a quarter section beside some of those further 
South. It also suggests one reason why the Southron has 
so long ruled this country. There is nothing like land to 
implant in others and in its owner the sense of power. 
The possession of the treasures in the vaults of Boston 
banks would not give its owner or his poor neighbor such 
a realizing sense of his consequence as the calling of this 
farm his own. Our riches have been stored in factories and 
banks, in city houses and country seats, costly but small. 
16 



242 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

Theirs have been spread out over the earth : they can ride 
for miles on their own land ; they own to the skies and the 
central fires. These last seem now to be breaking through 
the crust. What is a Fifth Avenue palace or millions of 
stocks to such possessions ? England's nobility have main- 
tained their preeminence by maintaining the proprietorship 
of the soil. These gentry would not sell a foot of their 
land ; they bin', but never sell ; they will not sell a white 
man a small farm any sooner than they would a black one 
himself. Now, add to this the owning' of the men who till 
it, and of their wives and children, and you have an aristoc- 
racy as much prouder than England's, as their property is 
higher. These landed slaveholders rule this State ; but 
sixteen thousand of them in a half million of white inhabit- 
ants, probably less than ten thousand of this class, and own- 
ing less than eighty thousand slaves ; yet they sit supremely 
and quietly on the necks of their white as well as black 
neighbors, drain the State of enterprise, and keep its poorer 
classes in contemptuous degradation. 

The manor-house is situated near the eastern edge of the 
lot, and near the turnpike. Turn from the road, and go south 
through a pleasant shaded roadway for about a third of a 
mile, and you come to the mansion. Near the road on the 
right is a heap of slave huts. The overseer's residence, a 
good-sized but shabby-looking brick building, stands among 
them. Barns and sheds are close at hand ; on the right, 
through a long vista of trees, an eighth of a mile from the 
road, stands the revolutionary house. It .is a low, spacious, 
wooden, yellow mansion, enlarged evidently at different 
times, one of its latter additions being a Catholic chapel. 
It has none of the costly elegance of the new houses of 
New York and New England, but looks much like the largest 
of the old mansions, made a good deal larger by plain addi- 
tions. It had the comely, comfortable look of a grandee in 
his lean and slippered pantaloon. 



SLAVERY DYING. 243 

I turned from the house to the quarters of its colored 
people, as they euphemistically call slaves here ; they shrink 
from that word. I rode a little way beyond the house, hav- 
ing no invitation to stop ; had I stopped, I should probably 
have found it rather difficult to get away, as the sympathies 
of this descendant of that patriot are all with the seces- 
sionists. 

As I rode away, I met a slave woman dragging herself 
along to her work. As I had not the entree to the master, 
I thought I would do the next best thing — cultivate the 
acquaintance of his most precious property. I asked her 
how many colored people there were on the estate. She 
said there was better than a hundred in these quarters, and 
there were other quarters above. 

" Have jou a good time ? " 

"Yes, Sundays. AVe have to work hard all the week, 
but we get together Sundays and enjoys ourselves/' 

" Where are you going ? " 

" To the field where the rest of the gang is — I have been 
to nurse my baby." 

"How old is it?" 

" Four months." 

Fearing if I talked longer I should get her into trouble, 
and myself too, I threw her a quarter and bid her good 
by. She seemed amazed at the sight of the bit of money. 
I fancy her millionnaire owner had never given her as much, 
except at Christmas, in all his life. 

The houses where these cattle are stabled are about as 
comely and cleanly as a pig-sty. I found it hard to believe 
that so rich and so lordly a man should put his choicest 
creatures in such huts. I contrasted them with the hand- 
some cottages with which the great land-owners of the 
Hudson delight to adorn their estates, and in which they 
require their tenants to live in a neat and sometimes elegant 
style. But then these are compelled to treat them thus, or 



244 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

they will have to give them more than they wish to bestow. 
A neat stone dairy, just behind these huts, showed that the 
proprietor knew how to set off his estate with pretty build- 
ings, if he only dared to do so. 

Should he put his slaves in such houses, they must be 
taught to respect themselves ; they must have beds and 
tables, and carpets and pictures, and all the little and big 
adornings of a real home. Could he compel the mother to 
work behind the plow, and walk back and forth two or 
three miles to nurse her babe, if she was living in this style ? 
Could he drive the young, pretty girls, some of whom I 
saw, like field oxen, from such cosy homes, with their flower 
gardens, and inward comforts and elegances ? His culti- 
vated taste would revolt at that, and so he treats them 
worse than he does his horses ; he has scores of these, hand- 
some blooded animals, and their stables, close by the negro 
huts, far surpass them in respectability and comfort. 

I drove out on the turnpike, and left the great manor of 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton with profounder detestation 
than ever before of the demon which possessed it, and which 
transformed its servants into slaves and its masters into 
tyrants. 

A Slave Pex. 

We leave the Marshall House at Alexandria, with its 
fresh and perpetual memories of Ellsworth's daring and 
death, follow the street west for half a mile or more, and 
reach a good-looking brick house, with a high fence on the 
east side, inclosing a yard, and some lower brick and 
wooden buildings that join the main building and run back 
from the street. Over the windows are printed, in larg-e 
black and white letters, like the institution it advertises, 
the names of the enterprising proprietors of the establish- 
ment, with "Dealers in Slaves" under their "Christian" 
names. 



SLAVERY DYING. 245 

Here is one of the depots of which so much has been writ- 
ten. We enter the rear quarters. Whitewashed and painted, 
they have no very offensive look. Xo Pharisaic tomb ever 
looked lovelier to a Jewish eye than this to a Virginian's. 
The difference between them was in favor of the latter. 
For the "inward parts" of this glittering tomb were 
sweet and attractive to his corrupted sense. No vampire 
ever delighted in the contents of a grave as much as he in 
the living creatures that had tenanted this spot. 

The inner court was about one hundred feet square, 
paved with brick, with walls not less than twenty feet high, 
and a rude shed projecting from one side, as a shelter from 
the sun or rain. Here the "cattle" were permitted to run 
at large, and probably were sorted according to age or con- 
dition. Here the purchasers could make their selections ; 
and hence the happy property passed away, like the pilgrims 
from the land of Beulah, to that perfect paradise, the plan- 
tation of the South. 

My friend with me said he had often heard them sing- 
ing as he had passed by. That shows how happy they 
were, and how cruel it was of the fanatical North to seek 
to prevent the spreading of this more than scriptural, even 
Southern, holiness and blessedness over all these lands. 

I thought of Paul and Silas in prison — - how they prayed 
and sang praises unto God. Now, as then, not only here, 
but over the whole region, through the vast prison of 
slavery, there is a great earthquake, so that its foundations 
are shaken, and many of its doors are being opened, and 
the prisoners' bands are loosed. I would that I could add, 
the jailers are penitent and converted. That will come in 
due time. 

In this court were spread tables for some of the soldiers 
— a great change in one short month. I went into the dun- 
geon. A trap-door, opening in the floor of the court, let 
me down into the cell underground, moderately spacious 



246 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

and immoderately dirty. As I stood there and thought of 
the free men who had been thrust in there, and of their 
sufferings and sorrows, my heart bled very fast. I re- 
membered that though light had broken out here, there 
were such courts and cells at Baltimore still occupied by 
slaves. They were yet all over one half of our land, and 
I could but pray that this great conflict might not cease 
till each of them, like this, was occupied by the armies of 
the Republic, and their former occupants were standing in 
the fullness of their long-sought liberty.* 

A Rational Beast and His Possibilities. 

A grove of handsome trees, tall grass, and a stirring 
breeze are the accompaniments of this talk. I hope the 
reader will find some traces of their presence lingering in 
it, refreshing him with a vivacity not its own. 

"As sunbeams stream through liberal space, 
And nothing jostle or displace, 
So waves the pine tree through my thought, 
And fans the dreams it never brought." 

t 
Slaves are working- just by me, and will give the letter 
the flavor of the palmetto rather than the pine. One of 
these "beasts" (they are as hard to name as the "'luu" 
the Revelator saw, and which our translators did into that 
wretched English) draws near me in his work. I bring 
my thoughts back instantly from their wanderings, and 
concentrate them on this central object to-day of all the 
civilized world. 

" You like slavery, don't you ? " 
" No, sir ; who ever liked to be a slave ? " 
"I've heard many say that you who were slaves pre- 
ferred it to freedom." 

* See Note IX. 



SLAVERY DYING. 247 

" It isn't so ; I should like to be free. Everybody wants 
to be." 

" What do you want to be free for ? " 

••What a queer question that is! What does anybody 
want to be free for ? " 

" But you can't take care of yourself, if free, they tell me." 

" Why not, sir? We take care of ourselves now, and 
make money for our masters. If we didn't, they would 
wish us dead right quick." 

Verily hath a "beast" discourse of reason. I was as 
much amazed as Jacques, when, like me, he " met a fool in 
the forest," and found before he got through with him that 
he was himself the greater fool. 

I am afraid I committed great treason by such conversation. 

I, however, thus settled a very knotty question in natural 
history that has long troubled the savans, namely, if the 
lower orders of creation are endowed with the faculty of 
reason. Xot only was that problem solved, but a very im- 
portant discovery was made, that they could talk readily, 
and in as good English as the human, that is, the white, 
race can, among whom they live. Some of them, no doubt, 
may be taught to read and write, and acquire the more 
recondite sciences, and even may learn to cultivate the 
domestic feelings, filial, fraternal, parental, and conjugal, 
and possibly, in rare cases, can be taught to pray and 
preach, and make quite respectable Christian brutes. 

I congratulate my Southern brethren on the wonderful 
discovery they have made, that such an order of beings is 
found among those creatures over whom God has given man 
dominion. They have been a little too modest about pub- 
lishing to the world their treasure. They are getting bravely 
over this, however. Under the sacred inspirations of such 
teachers as Dr. Smith, Professor Bledsoe, and as many other 
prophets as gathered together once on a time at Mount 
Carmel, they have become convinced that they should not 



248 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

only tell to the listening and astonished earth the wondrous 
tale, but should fight with fire and sword every one who 
will not aecept their opinion for truth. 

I am constrained to confirm this statement of theirs, 
that they have a species of rational, feeling, Christian crea- 
tures, which (I cannot say whom — that pronoun belongs only 
to the human race) they can and do treat precisely as they 
do their horses and pigs, only the former do not have quite 
so easy a time or quite so luxurious living as the latter. 
I am sorry to add that they have not yet perceived the 
capacity for development which these creatures possess, nor 
the great variety of important uses to which they may be 
applied. They ought to take a few lessons in Goodyear, 
and see how he has worked his patent rubber into innumer- 
able forms, and so work up their patent Negro to something 
near his capacity. 

Even my untutored eye discerns that it is susceptible of 
immense improvement, and of emplo3 T ment in a myriad of 
ways that will pay. Excuse that Yankee thought. I find 
it is not totally unknown or disliked in this superior clime. 
This " strange beast," that can think, and feel, and talk, 
just like a human being, should not be confined to works 
that ,a steam-plow and reaper, a mere ox or horse, can do 
as well as he. He could be trained, I am positive, to the 
very highest of those labors by which we have to earn our 
daily bread. Only apply the right kind of culture, and give 
him the right sort of feed, and he will relieve the divine 
Caucasian of much of the drudgery which he has to under- 
go, and which is so hard in this hot country, and so de- 
grading to that dignified head of creation. 

I have no doubt that a doctor could train this animal so 
that he could diagnose as well as himself, and might be 
sent on those long midnight journe3'S, and could be com- 
pelled to go through those painful watchings by perilous 
couches, which exhaust the good white physician. Sleeping 



SLAVERY DYING. 249 

comfortably in his bed, lounging comfortably on his farm, 
he could send this creature, after being Rareyfied in col- 
leges literary aud medical, on these laborious missions. 
So the merchant might do his buying and selling, " shave " 
and be "shaved" through his chattel personal, he mean- 
while "loafing" sumptuously everyday. So the lawyer 
could get up and get off his pleas ; the judge make up and 
pronounce his decisions ; the sheriff execute his writs ; the 
general drill his troops, and the troops themselves be drilled, 
— all by this admirable proxy. The editor could write those 
splendid editorials on State-rights, and the superiority of 
Southern statesmanship, society, religion, and civilization 
generally, and never himself write a line or think a thought 
on the inspiring themes. The legislator could decree and 
the governor execute by the same medium. Even the min- 
isters, the hardest worked of all male people, could be re- 
lieved by using the gifts the gods provide. Wouldn't it be 
nice to feel no nervousness creeping over you as Saturday 
comes and finds you with no beaten oil of the sanctuary 
wherewith to fill the pulpit lamps on the morrow ? Wouldn't 
it be pleasant to have the hot Sunday's sun rise upon you 
with no premonitory sweat oozing out of your pores at the 
thought of the work before you? All you have to -do is 
to select one of the purest blood of this breed, send him to 
Randolph Macon, or Emory and Henry, where they know 
how to treat and train them, and then at every conference 
the itinerant rides away to his appointment with or on his 
factotum (they ride on them in Dahomey), sets him to 
studying, writing, preaching, visiting (the religious sort), 
all for his board and clothes, — just what it costs to keep 
his horse, — feed and harness. 

If they wish for a specimen of the extraordinary devel- 
opment this creature can reach, who is a full proof of the 
feasibility of my plan, I can bring to Maryland one of this 
" kind," that was born and trained on her soil, and under 



250 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

the blessed influence of this benign institution, which not 
one of her ministers dares say is sinful, and many say is 
right. This Maryland animal has been trained partly under 
less favorable influences of freedom and equality, and hence 
is not as advanced as he would have been had he staid in 
the holy ordinance of slavery. Yet, despite this defect, he 
can as far surpass the greatest of the human orators of this 
State in art, pathos, reason, dramatic power, and all the 
other qualities that sweep an audience, as the white man 
by nature surpasses the black something. They should get 
this fine specimen of the capacities of their slave creature, 
and show it off in the Maryland Institute. The name of 
this excellent proof of the possibilities of slavery and 
Africa, is Frederic Douglass. 

But I am getting enthusiastic. " The swelling theme " 
makes the style swollen. I can only say with Hosea Big- 
low on a like occasion, — 

" Forgive me, my friends, if I seem to be het; 
But a subject like this must with vigor be met." 

I reluctantly abandon the enticing topic, only request- 
ing that if, like Archimedes, Pliny, Ledyard, and many 
such, I perish through my too great desire to enlarge the 
bounds of human knowledge, I shall be held for a brief 
season in moderately grateful remembrance by my friends 
in this region for these discoveries and suggestions. 

I have talked in the " Hercles vein," not because it is 
the only vein that bleeds to-day. Below the titillation of 
the surface flow swift and strong the deep currents of 
sympathy for those in this bounteous land who are bereft 
of all bounties. How plainly do I hear in this quiet wood, 
far from the noise of camp and street, — 

" The still, sad music of humanity, 
Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power 
To chasten and subdue." 



SLAVERY DYING. 251 



Arlington when first Captured. 

From the gateway of General Lee's grounds the road 
soon enters a magnificent grove, as wild and massy as a 
White Mountain forest ; though, unlike that, the ground is 
clear of underbrush, so that one can take in at a glance 
large spaces of the grand scenery. How cool and delight- 
ful is the change from the hot and dusty street to this 
charming forest ! 

The soldiers of the New York Eighth — dapper, small, 
and smart as are NeAv York City soldiers — are scattered 
here and there along the road, lying on logs or stretched 
beside their tents. They give a novel and yet already 
familiar aspect to the scene. Winding up through this 
landscape and woodscape for a mile or so, we reached the 
broad summit where the house stands. Trees filled the 
large and level space close up to the house. In among the 
trees stands the main body of the tents of the regiment. 
The house is a spacious brick mansion, old-fashioned, gloomy, 
and decidedly seedy. Great pillars, large enough for a 
building thrice its size, support a portico. Before this the 
lawn rolls down over a score or so of acres to the woods 
that engirt it. Beyond lies the placid Potomac, and be- 
yond that the more placid Capitol, glittering in the western 
sun as brightly as though no traitor's eye had ever looked 
on it from this spot enviously and murderously. Entering 
the house you find the old-fashioned look of the outside 
intensified. It seems to have none of the modern con- 
veniences which the humblest cottages of the North enjoy. 
Fitted out elegantly two or three generations ago, it looks 
as much out of place as the perfect "one-horse shay " 
among the fancy turn-outs of Central Park. " ; Tis sixty 
years since," seems written over everything. High-back 
chairs, high-post bedsteads, antique and very ordinary pic- 



252 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

tures, stag* antlers, and many other venerable institutions, 
show that it is an heir-loom, and not of the living present. 
Northern houses of this sort do not disdain the modern 
comforts and conveniences. Gas and water can flow be- 
tween old timbers as well as new. Modern chairs mix in 
with the ancient as children with old folks. But the pride 
of the real, Simon-pure, no-mistake Tom Thumbs, who style 
themselves F. F. V.'s, is to have everything old. Even the 
children here are probably born a hundred years old. Either 
pride or poverty, perhaps both, keeps the house in such a 
moldy state. Going to the rear, you notice the inevitable 
negro quarters, detached wings running from each end of 
the house, and, as I have noticed in Maryland, half way 
between the mansion and the stables. These buildings are 
large enough to accommodate, cattle fashion, quite a num- 
ber of head. General Lee not being at home, I leave my 
card with his servants. 

An old gray-headed negro, dressed in a neat black suit, 
sat on one of the door-sills. I looked in, and found a cellar 
some six feet deep, into which some broken steps descended, 
I asked him if those were his quarters. He replied in the 
affirmative. 

" Had you no floor ? " 

" Yes, I had one, but the rats troubled me so I took 
it up." 

" How long have you lived here ? " 

" Several years." 

" Alone ? " 

" Since my wife died." 

" Do you find it comfortable down there ? " 

" 0, yes, pretty comfortable." 

I looked down. There was an excuse for a bed in one 
corner, an old broken bit of a stove, a little table with a 
dish or two, candle-ends, etc., on it, a broken chair, an ax, 
a billet or two of wood, and the common earthen floor of 



SLAVERY DYING. 253 

a cellar ; high up out of reach was a dirty window. Here 
was another proof of the old-fashioned notions that rule 
this region. An old man of nearly if not more than four- 
score years, modest, neat, courteous, living in a cellar, and 
in as much worse condition as any pauper I ever saw as a 
pauper's is worse than a prince's. My ears have been 
stuffed since I came here with the superior condition of the 
slaves to the free blacks. I have* visited two of the grand- 
est estates of this region, the Carrollton Manor and Arling- 
ton Heights. I have entered more than one of the free 
blacks' humble cottages, and I must say my eyes saw only 
filth and misery in the one, in the other neatness, self-respect, 
poverty, but pride also ; yes, good reader, pride ! Why 
shouldn't these scions of a mighty race have some of their 
haughty fathers' feelings ? I entered one of the hum- 
blest of these huts near the Eelay. The floor was as 
white as a Dutch dame's the morning after washing-day. 
Near the door stood an old trunk, the gift, probably, of 
some primeval mistress, — perhaps Noah's wife's to Ca- 
naan's, her granddaughter-in-law, and the first female slave. 
( Vide Dr. Smith and other very learned pro-slavery com- 
mentators, passim.) I never saw a cleaner house than that 
humble Christian's. The yard was swept as nice as the 
floor. Yet her husband had been a slave, and was then of 
that poor, despised company of free blacks whom so many 
here are ready to lift up their heel against. I have seen 
no slaves' quarters to compare with these bits of free soil. 

I left the old man so tenderly cared for by those whom 
he has served so long, after commending him to Him who 
was as despised and rejected of men, and who had not even 
a damp cellar wherein to lay His head. Crossing to the 
opposite buildings, I saw a comely quadroon or octoroon 
washing. The floor was on her room, and half a dozen 
lively chattels on the floor. The breed is rather interesting 
in its adolescent state. Young lambs, and pigs, and dogs, 



254 LETTEKS FROM CAMP. 

and kittens have long been favorites of the farm. I don't 
think any of them superior to the younglings of this species 
of property. I found myself enjoying the gambols of these 
brown lambkins. It is really a fine-looking creature. Curly 
locks, quite too long for a lamb's or a negro's; large, laugh- 
ing eyes ; brown but well-cut features, much more closely 
resembling a Caucasian's than the ape's or gorilla's, to which 
they are said to be allied ; fine-turned legs, and neat little 
feet, whose hollow did not make a very great hole in the 
ground, as they went capering about the house and the 
yard, — these are some of the characteristics of this king 
of beasts. 

I asked the mother (dam perhaps I ought to say: ma-dam 
somebody will some time say), " TTho do 3*011 belong to ? " 

" Mrs. Lee." 

" Are you a member of the Church ? " 

" Yes, the Baptist," 

" How many children have you ? " (Pardon me for using 
the word children. She talked and acted so much like a 
Christian mother I didn't like to say " young ones.") 

" Seven." 

" Do you expect to be free ? " 

" Yes, sir ; in about a year our time is up." 
' Do you want to be free ? " 

" Yes, sir, I do." 

" What for ? " 

" Because I do." 

Didn't that reason show the woman as much as the ba- 
booness? Not being acquainted with the latter's method of 
reasoning, I cannot be sure, but it struck me as a very famil- 
iar and conclusive answer. I bade her good by, a thing I 
never did a Northern animal, and threw some parting smiles 
at the jolly little contrabands who are to be transformed in 
a year or so from creatures that are appointed as meat for 
man (Genesis ix. 3) into beings made in the likeness of God. 



SLAVERY DYING. 255 



A VERY TENDER CONSCIENCE.' 



A gentleman in our neighborhood supplied some of the 
officers' tables with milk. When Sunday came no milk 
came. Upon inquiry it was found that he had conscientious 
scruples about sending them milk that day. As they had 
no ice, and hence must be left destitute of this agreeable 
addition to the liquid distillment which the cooks called 
coffee, he finally relented and sent the milk, but would take 
no pay for it, — at least on that day. Yet this gentleman 
was a secessionist, a slaveholder, and had secured a valuable 
and beautiful estate, I understood, chiefly through the sale 
of human flesh. On one occasion it was said, that having 
received some thirty-four " head " (the very word I have 
heard used in speaking of slaves) of this stock as a marriage 
dowry, — what a gift to crown those sweet and sacred 
bonds ! — he sold thirty of them. Were the King of Daho- 
mey's funeral sacrifices much more horrible in the sight of 
God than the agonies which graced this Christian wedding 
festival ? 

Having coined their blood to drachmas, he moved hither 
with his fair bride and her remaining body-guard, and in- 
vested the drachmas, the price of innocent blood, in a beau- 
tiful farm. Is not this the Potter's Field which these many 
times thirty pieces of silver purchased ? 

As an offset to this slave-trading, I ought to set another 
fact in his history of late occurrence, in which he. refused 
to sell a slave. Some of our brethren hereabout, and yon- 
about, too, for the matter of that, lay much stress on the 
fact that our slaveholding brethren never sell their slaves. 
Let me show how this virtue is illustrated in the life of my 
hero. A short time since, a free colored man from the 
South, I think from South Carolina, whose wife and children 
were the "property" of this gentleman, came here to see 



256 LETTERS EROM CAMP. 

him. Whether invited, or whether a fugitive from Secessia, 
I know not. He is said to be a man of property, and was 
anxious to invest this property in his family. The Avife be- 
ing old, and lame, and fleshy, and otherwise of no great pe- 
cuniary advantage to her " owner," was graciously and 
freely given to her liege lord ; though I understand no free 
papers were given her, so as to make the deed of gift of any 
real value. But her daughter, the only child left, a good- 
looking girl of sweet sixteen, he would not sell to her own 
father. The father offered thirteen hundred dollars for his 
daughter, but was refused. 

Will not that do for a modern illustration of the ancient 
gnat and camel text ? A man who would not sell milk on 
Sundays, and would not sell a father his own daughter, 
would sell a score or two of his brothers and sisters into 
hopeless bondage, and with their blood and bones live in 
elegance and abundance ! Did he not strain at a gnat and 
swallow a whole herd of camels ? What if I should cap the 
climax of this narrative by telling you that this conscien- 
tious soul-trader and soul-holder is a minister of our Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ ? It is even so. He is the elected 
guide and guardian of the morals and piety of a very influ- 
ential portion of this community ; and what is most aston- 
ishing is, that not the least objection is even thought of be- 
cause of this conduct. I heard of some ladies who refused 
to attend on his worship because he was a secessionist. I 
heard others complain that he was too convivial in his hab- 
its ; but I heard nobody find any fault with him for holding, 
selling, or refusing to sell, these children of a common Fa- 
ther, brothers and sisters of a common Savior. 

I looked often at his tasty chapel, but could not make up 
my mind to desecrate the Sabbath by attending upon his 
ministrations. But happening to be at a quarterly confer- 
ence of our own spotless and wrinkleless Church, where two 
slaveholders were nominated by the preacher in charge for 



SLAVERY DYING. 257 

stewards, and elected unanimously, without so much as an 
"affectionate admonition" from the excellent presiding el- 
der, I thought I was myself getting into the gnat-straining 
condition by over-scrupulousness. So I concluded, being 
with the Romans, to do as they did, and see how near this 
worthy rector and I came to worshiping the same God. 

Do you want to know how he looked and spoke ? De- 
scriptions of such persons will be curiosities of literature 
eagerly perused by future generations. This was a true 
successor of the apostles. No broken chain of descent was 
his, joined together by martyrial hands, and, perchance, by 
those of laymen even, often completely sundered, or united 
only by that unseen, and hence, for ecclesiastical purposes, 
useless Spirit of God, that carried the Church into the wil- 
derness and supported her there. No ; the bright links, 
clear and defined, and often of the finest gold, as, for in- 
stance, Alexander Borgia, Joan, Leo X., Laud, and a host 
of others, of whom not this world nor any other was worthy, 
glittered in the chain that bound this servant to his Master. 

You expect a hard-featured, hard-voiced, hard-mannered 
man, with tones like the snapping of a slave-whip, and the 
manners of Haley and Legree combined. You don't under- 
stand human nature. So many paint Nero, who was really 
the most elegant gentleman of his age. We must remem- 
ber that only in the other world does the inner nature body 
forth itself in the outer form. Here the reverse is apt to 
be true. The finest natures are hidden in the least expres- 
sible forms, and the vilest are not unfrequently, like Burr, 
and Goethe's Mephistophiles, witty, wise, and polished, hand- 
some, gay, and sober, a perfect man in the worldly sense 
of perfection. 

The preacher aforesaid is a middle-aged, gray, and bald- 
headed gentleman, of pleasant address, with a quiet, gentle, 
soft, pathetic tone and manner. I never heard the service 
read so beautifully. It had a melting cadence that glided 
17 



258 LETTEES FROM CAMP. 

into your secret heart. There was none of the hard and 
formal style of the mere reader, none of the airs of the rhet- 
orician ; but a subdued grace, yet full of life, that was very 
fascinating. With the constant undertone of my whole moral 
being conflicting with the sounds that met my ear, I could 
not but feel, as he read it, a newer and richer quality in that 
admirable service. Yet how some of the sentences he read 
startled me! I could but think of the medieval legend 
of the wonderful preacher, who, arrayed in black vestments, 
swept his audience with most pathetic and powerful appeals, 
and after he had left them they found it was the archfiend 
himself that had been thus lifting them to heaven. These 
were some of the solemn phrases that thrilled me so strange- 
ly, while he plaintively uttered them and I fervently followed 
him: "We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, Lord God; 
and that it may please thee to show thy pity upon all pris- 
oners and captives ; that it may please thee to defend and 
provide for the fatherless children and widows, and all that 
are desolate and oppressed. God, merciful Father, that 
despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire 
of such as are sorrowful, mercifully assist our prayers that 
we make before thee, in all our troubles and adversities, 
whensoever they oppress us, and graciously hear us, that 
those evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil or man 
worketh against us may be brought to naught ; that thy 
servants, being hurt by no persecutions, may evermore give 
thanks unto thee in thy holy Church, through Jesus Christ 
our Lord." The psalms for the day were cxliv., cxlv., cxlvi. 
In them he read these words : " Save me and deliver me 
from the hand of strange children, whose mouth talketh van- 
ity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. . . . That 
there be no leading- into captivity, and no complaining in 
our streets. . . . The Lord looseth men out of jn'ison. The 
Lord helpeth them that are fallen. As for the way of the 
ungodly, he turneth it upside down."' 



SLAVERY DYING. 259 

His sermon was a practical discourse on a Christian's tri- 
als, and the comforts which, through the Spirit, he could 
extract from them. But I was preaching a good many ser- 
mons during this part of the service. I was asking, " Does 
he bring his bond-servants around him for daily prayer and 
religious instruction ? Why are they not here at church 
with him ? Does he ever go to the poor little chapel to 
which the wicked pride of the community exiles them and 
their kindred, and there comfort them with such readings 
and such discourses as these ? " Especially I was anxious 
to preach a short sermon to him on the text that was printed 
around the stained window in the chancel : " Repent ye ! 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." I presume I should 
have shocked the audience more than the rude Baptist did 
his hearers if I had read that third chapter of Matthew, and 
given its needed and divine application. I could not keep 
my eyes off that text. I thought it is not possible for this 
congregation to worship here and be unmindful of its mean- 
ing. Yet I was probably the only person that ever saw it 
that read it in this true and solemn light. Thank God, the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand. These troops, as those that 
gathered round John, are unconsciously, and many of them 
unwillingly, assisting in ushering it in. 

The march of events in the political, the religious, the 
social world, all show that He is soon to appear who will 
unloose these heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, 
and break every yoke. His fan is in his hand, and He will 
thoroughly purge His floor. How glorious He appears in 
this apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength! As 
the Liberator of His enslaved children He shines forth upon 
foes and formalists of this land of promise. His shoe-latchet, 
not only His most earnest advocates and forerunners, but 
much more these proud transgressors, are unworthy to stoop 
down and unloose. Blessed is He that cometh in the name 
of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest ! 



260 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

That tenderness of conscience which I have not spoken of 
as wrong in itself, but only strange in contrast with the hard- 
ness of the same conscience in other and infinitely more im- 
portant matters, that evident apprehension of the spiritual 
significance of the word of God and of prayer, I can but 
think, show that in him yet live the germs of a divine life. 
May these germs burst the rocky soil of the hideous sin 
which now encases them, and blossom into beautiful and 
fruitful life. May he soon say to that congregation, but a 
very few of whom are partakers of that sin by actual slave- 
holding, and some of whom I know shrink from it as imper- 
iling their own salvation, — may he say to them, "I have re- 
pented ; I have brought forth works meet for repentance. 
I have laid the ax at the root of the tree. I give my slaves 
their liberty. I give them education, respectability, and, so 
far as I can by precept and example, I give them the grace 
which my Savior has given to me." What rejoicing will be 
in that Church, in that neighborhood, in this State, when 
he, or one like him, shall thus stand up for Jesus, and shall 
proclaim by act, as well as word, that the great and accept- 
able day of the Lord has here come. 



LETTERS FROM CAMP. 



III. PROFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 




Baltimore, Wednesday, July 24. 

N a straw pallet, spread on a few rough, wet boards, 
lying loosely over the grassy ground, under leaky 
canvas, in the generally damp and stick}'' atmos- 
phere of a tent in a shower, I am writing my last 
letter from the seat of war. A bit of candle, dimly burning, 
stuck in a tin cup, standing on the end of a valise, acts as 
a gas-burner. One of the private soldiers lies stretched in 
his blanket near me asleep, dreaming of the home he is 
hoping so soon to see. Round about are the odds and ends 
of a camp-tent, such as everybody ought to see, for at least 
one week in a year. But a sword hanging on the rear pole, 
and a musket or two on the floor, with haversacks, knap- 
sacks, fatigue-caps, huge gray blankets, and sundry other 
military knickknacks, give the spot a little more of the Church 
militant air than it has in those heavenly seats. 

Stereoscopic pictures are popular; and a true stereoscope 
delights in the little homely every-day nothings that make 
up our every-day life. So this last look of your correspon- 
dent may not be out of place, as he sits a la Turk, with his 

(261) 



262 LETTERS EEOM CAMP. 

paper on his knee, in the only silent hours of a camp day, 
those that are close on to midnight, bringing to an end his 
long discourses, to which some readers may have given, he 
trusts, an attent ear. 

The Monday when the tidings of our reverses came in 
was dark and rainy, but the news was far darker than the 
day. The copperheads seemed to think that the sky was 
wonderfully clear and warm, and were sunning themselves in 
great crowds at the corners where the secession papers, the 
Sun, Exchange, and South, are published. The poison of asps 
was under and upon their lips. Their mouths were full of 
cursing and bitterness, and their feet would have been swift 
to shed blood, had it not been for the military power, which 
measurably awed them. 

How changeable are the affairs of this world ! Sundaj r 
was the happiest day Washington has ever known; Monday 
the saddest. Light was on every Union countenance here. 
The forces of the nation were moving swiftly to the desired 
goal. The enemy fled before them. Many prophets were 
crying, " Within forty days and secession shall be over- 
thrown." Suddenly the cry comes, "We are retreating; we 
are defeated ; we are annihilated." Beauregard will be in 
Washington by midnight. So swift treads sorrow on the 
heels of joy. Everybody gave up everything as lost. The 
secessionists declared, and the Unionists half believed, that 
Lincoln would make another secret flight through Baltimore. 
Extra guards were set around the camps, and a thoroughly 
stormy and gloomy night set down on the homes and hearts 
of all this region. 

But the morning- cometh, if also the night, and the gray 
light of a new dawn began to glimmer around the great dis- 
aster. We began to hear courageous words from soldiers 
and civilians. One Baltimore man said he could march up 
to a masked battery ; another, that he must certainly shoulder 
his musket ; another was entreating General Banks to supply 



PROFIT AXD LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 263 

the Union men with arms. They boldly withstood the se- 
cessionists around their own newspaper batteries, — no longer 
masked, — and defended the cause of the nation in her hour 
of peril. The soldiers were equally cheerful. Their home- 
sickness disappeared in a moment. They were ready to 
march to Virginia. I saw some of the Wisconsin troops on 
Tuesday morning. " Where are you going ? " I asked. 
" To Richmond or to death," was the reply. This rallying 
and strengthening of spirits was one of the gleams of light. 

A great disaster has befallen the national cause. What 
is it, and what are its consequences ? Has it left us worse 
or better than we were when this correspondence began ? 
Have we made any positive advance in the past three months ? 
Shall we succeed ? If not, what then ? Much had been 
done. When the national troops began to pour through 
this city and State, three months ago, the capital was in the 
greatest peril. No fortifications, no troops, no preparations 
for defense. The enemy were at Harper's Ferry, Alexan- 
dria, and in Baltimore. Insolent, and. flushed with Sumter 
victories, they boasted that the Capitol should be desecrated 
with their flag before the first of May. Maryland was in 
the hands of the mob. The bridges were burned, and the 
secession legislature was called together. The West was 
as weak and undefended as the East. 

Now we have strong, well-armed, and occupied forts on 
the neights of Arlington and Alexandria. We have driven 
the enemy from Missouri and Western Virginia. We have 
put down insurrection in Baltimore, and banished all armed 
opposition from the borders of the State. We have the 
capital safe. We have expelled the foe from Harper's 
Ferry. We have raised and equipped an immense arm} 7 , won 
many victories, and for a time filled the rebels with fear and 
despair. We have developed a military spirit of the grand- 
est and deepest fervor, and, not least, have completely swept 
from the land that silly ostrich of a non-coercionist. Why, 



264 LETTEES FROM CAMP. 

I was up in Harford County yesterday, and heard some 
goodish country farmers say they were not secessionists and 
not coercionists. I looked on them as I would on pre-Adani- 
ite fossils ; they seemed almost as historic and venerable 
as the bits of bricks which mark the pleasant site of Cokes- 
bury College. When I heard that same ancient doctrine 
earnestly advocated by a gentleman of that rural district, 
whose clever discourse has a nipping and an eager air, I 
could not but think of Scott's Antiquary, and such Dryas- 
dust Old Mortalities, so long has that once powerful humbug 
been gathered to its fathers. Yet, three months ago, no 
April ephemeron buzzed more conceitedly and authoritatively. 
We have to grow by degrees in any knowledge, pleasant 
or painful. The threats of disunion it was never supposed 
would be carried out. Our duty to God and liberty com- 
pelled us to put those threats to the test. The secession 
of South Carolina dissipated our dreams as to the fanciful 
character of the long-threatened dissolution. It became a 
political reality. " It will not be general," said we. Virginia 
proved that an error. "It will not really assume a military 
and aggressive form.' ' Sumter settled that question . ' ' But a 
great uprising, a great military armament, a great expres- 
sion of the determination of the government to maintain 
itself will scatter the armed and ferocious mob." Missouri 
and Western Virginia seemed to prove this theory true. 
But Bull Bun has made it thin air. We see that the police 
service is no longer to be the legitimate business of the 
government. It will have to fight, to fight desperately, per- 
chance for its very existence. We have risen to the obli- 
gations of previous hours. Shall we to those that are now 
being laid upon us ? The people will. The government, 
civil and military, must. The deadly struggle is coming 
upon us. It will slay as many reputations as men. If the 
officers of the State and the army are not equal to the crisis, 
they must give way to those who are. 



PROFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 265 

Be assured the people will not give over this effort to de- 
liver themselves from an infamous thralldom without a strug- 
gle infinitely surpassing that of the last century. And be 
assured, too, that in this struggle the primal cause and curse 
will be throttled to death. A feud of nearly two hundred 
and fifty years 7 standing is being settled to-day. If the 
war holds on for a twelvemonth it will have only one phase. 
Everything else will be swept away, and one feeling fill 
every heart. Shall the slave power on this continent be 
supreme, or be utterly blotted out? Two hundred and forty 
years ago the seed Avas sown. At Jamestown a load of 
negro slaves was landed, at . Plymouth a band of Christian 
pilgrims. Within a few years of that date, when the busi- 
ness had become brisk in Virginia, the Dutch slave-traders 
thought they would test the cupidity of the Puritans, and a 
cargo entered Boston Harbor. It was refused a landing 
and driven from the province. Then was the seed sown out 
of which this bloody harvest is being reaped. 

The slave power has always ruled the continent. It ruled 
the colonies, it ruled the British cabinets as long as we were 
colonies ; it was no small element in causing the Revolu- 
tion, as Jefferson said in his Declaration. The Revolution 
was fought in the interests of freedom, and against the real 
slave power, which was intensely Tory. Hence all the Rev- 
olutionary patriots were abolitionists. But, the battle won, 
slavery again asserted its supremacy, and soon w t ou it. The 
Constitution recognized it. Washington signed a fugitive 
slave bill, and Jefferson annexed Louisiana in its interest. 
It caused the war of 1812, the war with Mexico, and the 
present war. It is met to-day on its own merits. Our 
statesmen do not yet avow it, but they feel it. We may 
have to fight for political existence, for personal liberty even. 
Any treaty of peace now made would leave us colonies, de- 
spised more than their lowest slaves. We may have to hear 
our Patrick Henrys, Otises, Adamses, and Warrens, sum- 



266 LETTEES EEOM CAMP. 

moning us to the last fight for our liberties. If so, no 
quarter will be shown to slavery. That or we must die. 
As to the result there can be no doubt. If our fathers, 
weak and few, and scattered over an immense territory, 
drove out the proudest and strongest nation in the world, 
because of mere political disfranchisement, Ave shall trample 
under our feet the accursed system that would rob us of 
honor, liberty, and life itself. We are face to face with 
savages, with devils. The first-born of Satan is at our 
throats. Shapes hot from hell rush upon our armies. "We 
take no prisoners " is their motto. A. soldier, I was told, 
in the late battle dragged some half dozen wounded com- 
rades to a ravine and fountain, where he was tending them. 
While thus engaged a company of rebels came up and he 
escaped. But every wounded soldier was bayoneted. 

Be not astonished at these things. The system they are 
defending surpasses in iniquity any on the face of the earth. 
What can it breed but hell-hounds ? And yet but yester- 
day, on the blessed Sabbath, I could not make a good old 
Baltimore conference brother confess that slavery was sin- 
ful. Nay, he expressly and emphatically denied it. 

" O wisdom, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason." 

This event will preeminently teach us our dependence on 
God. We had begun to have too much confidence in our- 
selves. We thought the enemy was flying so steadily and 
universally, that the affair was to close without any especial 
humiliation before God ; but we are brought to our senses. 
We shall have to call upon Him from whom alone cometh 
salvation. Unless He goes forth with us, we march in vain. 
Let the Church cry unto God, cry mightily, cry earnestly. 
Thus, and thus alone, shall the nation conquer. 

Again, this repulse was needed to bring about the only 
object to which this war must tend, in which it must be 



PROFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 267 

consummated, if it be really successful. Had we marched 
easily and triumphantly to Richmond, we should have had 
an armistice and terms of re-union, which would have left 
Slavery in full power ; slightly shorn of his locks, vet soon 
to have them grow again. Repulses and defeats strengthen 
a good, ruin a bad, cause. The object of God is to liberate 
these children of His, who have cried day and night unto 
Him for these many generations. Every defeat brings out 
this purpose the more clearly. The action of Congress to- 
day was bolder than it has ever been. It will grow in cour- 
age as disaster grows upon us. The defeat at Bunker's Hill 
paved the way to the Declaration. The defeat next year at 
Long Island only invigorated the spirits and nerved the arm 
of the people. 

So will it be now. The ferocity, the inhumanity, the 
flendishness of our foes, will only make us say that the cause 
that changes them to devils shall be extirpated. We shall 
advance to Senator Trumbull's position, and declare slavery 
abolished in the revolting States. I heard a Maryland gen- 
tleman say but yesterday, that he wished the government 
would issue that decree immediately. It will be issued if 
the war is prolonged. Let it go forward. What is your 
poverty, what, indeed, is the agony now rending a great 
multitude of Rachels, North and South, compared with the 
poverty and distress of the hundreds of thousands, of the 
millions upon millions, of God's dear children, in this fair 
land, for these centuries of bondage ! The cup is being 
commended to our own lips of which they have drank so 
constantly and so deeply. They were despised and rejected 
of men, — men of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs. We 
hid, as it were, our faces from them. They were despised, 
and we esteemed them not. In my intercourse here I have 
heard frequent and bitter denunciations of their brethren 
and sisters, from the lips of elegant and excellent Christian 
ladies. I have heard some such inhuman utterances by 



268 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 

Massachusetts and New York ladies, but they had nothing 
of the ferocious intensity of contempt and hatred which 
marked these speakers. I could easily see how the seces- 
sion feeling rages the hottest with the female part of the 
community, from Baltimore to New Orleans, when I heard 
the modest lips of godly matrons so full of ungodly speeches 
concerning their colored neighbors. All the Baltimore ladies 
are not like those above mentioned. Some of the most ten- 
der-hearted that I have ever known are here, showing their 
religion by their treatment of the degraded class among 
whom their lot is cast. 

Let the fact teach us that He who made us of one blood 
is leading this nation, stuffed with pride and insolence, into 
the fires that shall humiliate and purify. These thoughtless, 
cruel-hearted mothers, and wives, and sisters shall bleed 
and cry, and come down from their seats of pride, and, 
like the desolated Egyptian haughtinesses of old, shall sit 
down in the dust beside their despised bondwomen, and seek 
for comfort from these long-suffering, and hence deep-expe- 
rienced, souls. 

This is some of the sweet juice the bruised reed of pride 
and hope yields to your taste. Is it unpalatable ? Wait 
till the sorrow is yet sharper, and you may find your taste 
purged to apprehend its chaste and spiritual refreshment. 



THE DAT DAWNS.* 



The year of my redeemed is come." — Isaiah lxiii. 4. 




REAT events are sometimes ushered into being 
with thunders and earthquakings ; sometimes with 
the still small voice unheard of men. It is true 
that the kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
vation ; yet in some of the chief movements of that kingdom 
to its ultimate and universal sovereignty, there is the utmost- 
observation, and its final consummation will be accompanied 
with inconceivable pomp and glory. Both of these modes 
of manifestation have been connected with the coming- of 
the kingdom of G-od in the work of emancipation in America. 
The message which bat yesterday flew through all the 
land, and is already leaping over all seas, is one of the great 
epochs of that divine movement. The rising waves of lib- 
erty lap the throne of national sovereignty. He who but a 
year ago, in most careful terms, promised the protection of 
the national arm to the Satanic institution, now declares 
that it must gather up its feet to die. 

We may well exult over such a proclamation. It will 
cause rejoicings in the hut of the slave, in the palaces of 



* A sermon preached in the Clinton Street Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Newark, N. J., Sunday, March 9. 1862. See Note X. 

(269) 



270 THE DAY DAWNS. 

the princes, in the courts of heaven. If one could res- 
cue a brute creature from the pit on the Sabbath day, and 
rejoice over its deliverance, much more can we over the fast 
speeding salvation of these children of our common Father, 
brothers and sisters of our common Savior, the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

I. Let us notice the prominent .steps in the eventful his- 
tory of this great reformation. 

It started without observation. 

Thirty years ago the whole nation lay dead and buried 
in the grave of slavery. The long struggle of the fathers 
had not prevailed against the evil. Jefferson had written 
against it ; Washington had labored to abolish it ; Franklin, 
the President of the first Abolition Society in America, and 
in the world, and the first petitioner to Congress, the first 
to any legislative body for the abolition of slavery, had died 
an abolitionist, but with his desire unaccomplished. The 
Presbyterian Church, after passing strong resolutions against 
the sin, had gone to sleep in its arms. The Methodist 
Church, after having labored, through such great foes of 
slavery as Wesley, and Coke, and Asbury, to extirpate it 
from her fold and from the land, after having emancipated 
forty thousand bondmen in Maryland had given over the 
effort, and was in the complete control of the slaveholding, 
slave-trading ministers and members of the Gulf States. 
Statesmen, having vainly struggled to keep the hydra-headed 
Barbarism from crossing the Mississippi, had yielded Arkan- 
sas and Missouri to its sway, and retired, weary and dis- 
heartened, from the great conflict, and were busy in the 
little and forgotten rivalries of the hour. Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, New 
Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island had abolished it in 
their limits, not by selling its victims South, as some of 
their own children ignorantly or irreverently affirm, but by 
liberating them on the spot, and from motives of conscience 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 271 

alone. But the great movement had paused in its march. 
An imaginary line was the nominal barrier ; the mighty power 
of the Iniquity was the real barrier. The broad waves of 
freedom that had rolled to Mason and Dixon's line had been 
stayed, and a reflex tide of paralysis, of compromise, of 
complicity, set back upon us from that sea of death. All 
parties, all seats, all persons were submerged in its waves. 
The Samson of Liberty lay bound and shorn, and sleeping 
in the lap of the Delilah of Slavery. Then came there forth 
from an unknown quarter, in the city of Boston, a solitary 
beam of light, kindled from the embers of the abolitionism 
of the fathers, deep covered though they were with the 
cold ashes of silence and servility. 

" It smote the dark with uncongenial ray." 

A few souls saw the light and followed it, as the wise 
men did the star, unseen of the worldly and the wicked. It 
led them to a small upper room, where, among his scanty 
types, sat a young Quaker, who had lately been driven out 
of Baltimore, and who was weekly proclaiming through his 
little sheet the duty of immediate and unconditional eman- 
cipation — the very duty which Asbury and Garretson, and 
the Methodists of Baltimore, had proclaimed in that city 
forty years before. The darkness soon felt the light, and 
rose and raged around him. Ere many days, the men of 
wealth and standing of that city broke into a female prayer 
meeting, seized this brave and truth-telling- young man, 
dragged him by a rope through the streets, with a mob 
howling for his life. He was rescued from destruction only 
by the strong arm of municipal authority, and the strong- 
walls of a dungeon. From that hour to this, now in ob- 
scurity, now in the sight of all men, this Kingdom of God 
has been advancing. It brought men one by one into its 
service. Then single churches came, and from solitary 
altars the pare flame of the Shekinah of God's universal, 



272 THE DAY DAWNS. 

impartial, life-giving and liberty-giving love shone forth. 
Then it organized itself into associations and parties, had 
internal conflicts, as Peter and Paul had, and separations, as 
Paul and Barnabas had, and errors crept into 'portions of it, 
as into the Church at Corinth and Galatia. But it sloughed 
off the errors, and rose in increasing- beauty and majesty. 
Then it gained the mastery over States, and finally has 
placed itself substantially in the supreme seat of authority. 
Meantime the counter elements were none the less active. 
They made the rulers submit to them. The organized forces, 
religious and secular, had taken no side, directly, with the 
oppressed, and so were swept into the grasp of the op- 
pressor. They declared, through a President, that the 
mails, over more than half of our territory, should bear no 
message favorable to human freedom. They declared, 
through a Secretary of State, that Slavery was the Corner- 
Stone of our Republic, as Mr. Stephens says it is of the 
horrible fiction of a government, which that system, expelled 
from national power, has sought to extemporize. They 
seized upon the territory of a weak neighbor, with whom 
we were at peace, to give new outlets to their accursed 
merchandise in the bodies and souls of men. They passed 
laws, requiring, with threats of heavy fines and imprison- 
ments, every person in the nation, man or woman, to aid 
in stealing their brethren, and in reducing them to bondage. 
A minister of the Gospel now lies in prison in Northern Ohio, 
one of the freest sections of the land, for refusing to commit 
that crime. They abrogated the solemn ordinance of our 
fathers whereby this fearful sin was forbidden to march 
northward of a parallel of latitude, and strove by every 
means, presidential, congressional, judicial, military, and 
mobocratic, to push the Car of Juggernaut into the Free 
Territories, and thence into the Free States. Only by heroic 
sacrifices, sufferings, and death, was their scheme made to 
fail. Our future history will contain no more honorable 
names than the martyrs of Kansas. 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 273 

Those who are expected to hold the scales of justice 
evenly, and who are especially required, by the instincts 
of man and the Word of God, to defraud not the poor, nor 
take money against the innocent, the very fountain and 
origin of national justice, our Supreme Court, and its su- 
preme head, had the blasphemous audacity to declare that 
no person of African descent could sue in our courts, or 
had any rights which white men were bound to respect. 
Though but one out of a million of the drops of blood in his 
heart traced its origin to Africa, and so to our common 
fathers, Noah and Adam, and all the rest were of purest Cau- 
casian, he was prevented from appealing to the human rep- 
resentatives of divine justice, against any act of injustice, 
no matter how flagrant. The seat of Righteousness thus 
became the seat of Sin. How did the Divine voice ring in 
their ears, ''What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, 
and grind the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord." 

The river of death staid not here. There remained one 
thing more for it to do. It must nationalize itself in the legis- 
lation of the land. All seaports must be open to its cargoes, 
all roads to its coffles, all houses to its victims. So a slave 
code for the Territories and slave-trade in all the States, 
were demanded, and, had it not been for the activity of the 
counter and Christian element, they would have been en- 
acted ; and over your railroads, and along your splendid 
streets, would have been lashed, to-day, the miserable droves 
of human flesh, in and out of our great commercial me- 
tropolis. 

Minor, but not unimportant, events attend this career of 
national subjugation. Free speech and a free press were 
suppressed in the South. No party can stand there on the 
basis of Washington, Jefferson, and George Mason. All 
sects, organizations, journals, and tongues were compelled 
to adore the image the haughty dealers in human flesh set 
up, and whosoever fell not down and worshiped, that same 
18 



274 THE DAY DAWNS. 

hour was cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. 
All prostrated themselves admiringly before this worse than 
Babylonish idol. A little company of men, of the faith and 
courage of the Hebrew children, not only refused to bow 
down, but sought to snatch from the bloody jaws of the 
Moloch the poor victims he was daily devouring; and those 
who tenderly nursed the living idol with human flesh, caught 
the brave successors of those brave Hebrews, and hanged 
them on a tree. 

Athens for centuries remembered, with annual festivities 
and ceaseless gratitude, the courage of Theseus, son of her 
king. To her children and her children's children, for many 
generations, she told the tale, how the Cretan pirates, having 
ravaged her coasts, would grant her existence only on con- 
dition that she annually sent fourteen of her choicest youth, 
seven of her finest young men, seven of her fairest maidens, 
who should be offered to the Minotaur, a man-bull, that was 
begotten in horrid lust, and kept alive by the more horrid 
sustenance of human blood. And they loved to tell, how 
once, as the vessel bearing this dreadful -burden sailed out 
of the harbor, as many vessels have since sailed from Nor- 
folk, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile, with black sails, 
and full of lamentations and weeping, while parents, com- 
panions, or children stood on the shore overwhelmed with 
terrible distress, Theseus went with them, and with brave 
hands slew the boy-eating and girl-eating monster, and 
brought his kindred home. A greater than Theseus was 
Captain Brown ; and though he fell in his effort to extricate 
his brethren and sisters from the cruel jaws of this worse 
than the Minotaur, begotten, as that, in lust, and kept alive, 
as that was, by the living agonies of myriads of human souls, 
still his soul is marching on. Two years have not yet 
elapsed since the last two of his friends mounted the honor- 
able scaffold, whose remains this consecrated soil of New 
Jersey tenderly and joyfully embraces ; and before that short 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 275 

time had passed, scores of thousands of men, singing praises 
for his courage and conduct, march by the spot where he 
was captured, along the road up which he was taken, man- 
gled and faint, for a Pilate trial, by the jail where they 
chained him, the court-house where they mocked him, and the 
hill where they slew him. To-day citizens of Massachusetts 
occupy the hall where he was found guilty of insurrection, 
and treason, and murder ; and the lawyer who acted for the 
State, the judge who represented its injustice, the governor, 
who, so far from washing his hands of his blood, washed 
them in it, even the State itself, whose wicked impulses 
these wicked men but feebly expressed, are in a condition 
of avowed insurrection, treason, and murder. She is being 
tried, condemned, and executed by the mighty armies of 
freedom moving over her soil, under the inspiration of the 
people who have sent them forth, and led by the Lord of 
Hosts, who mustereth his hosts to battle. Surely, never was 
a false accusation so swiftly hurled back upon those that 
uttered it. Never did He who saj^s " Vengeance is mine, I 
will repay," so vividly and so rapidly commend to the lips 
of His enemies the cup they had forced down the throat of 
His servants. Insurrection, murder, and treason are written 
with the blazing finger of His justice on all, from the lowest 
servant to the State itself, who has dared to slay those who 
only sought peacefully to execute righteousness ; who only 
remembered those in bonds as bound with them. 

The slave power has thus, in every minor, major, and 
maximum form of iniquity, sought to throttle Democracy, 
Liberty, and Religion, in our land; and, finally, infuriated 
by the human blood it had drank, as such draughts are said 
to enrage those who physically drain them, it sprang at 
the government itself, and expected to have sat long ere 
this on the throne of national and undisputed sovereignty. 
Then comes a winter of discontent, a time of darkness, of 
helplessness, of despair ; then the open revolt of States, and 



276 THE DAY DAWNS. 

of officials of every grade ; then the seizure of forts and 
munitions of war ; then the assault on a helpless and starv- 
ing garrison ; then the marshaling of arms, and battle's 
magnificently stern array. Defeats rapidly multiply, and an 
hour of thick gloom rests down upon the people, and the 
war seems long, dubious, and almost hopeless ; when, lo ! 
one Sunday morning, Mill Springs is wet with the sacred 
blood of martyrs in this holy cause of nationality and liberty ; 
but the blood of traitors flows more profusely, and the tide 
of defeat is turned. Fort Henry falls ; Fort Donelson, the 
Western Thermopylae, yields to the advancing forces of no 
Asiatic tyrant, but of democratic equality and liberty, and 
Bowling Green, Columbus, and Nashville are bloodlessly 
ours. The West seemed to be securing all the glories of 
the conflict, when a word from the banks of the Potomac, 
written by the commander-in-chief of our armies, the ap- 
pointed head of the people, announces to the world a greater 
victory than any won on fields of blood, fraught with grander 
consequences, and sure of a higher renown. 

We have thus led you through this very brief resume of 
events, from the first blast of the trumpet of Freedom from the 
lips of a then obscure young Quaker printer, thirty years ago, 
to the last, which has just been sounded out from the Presi- 
dential mansion, foretelling the death of the monster, against 
which the youthful David then went out to battle. William 
Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln will stand together in 
our history. They are the ministers of God — the one the 
forerunner of the Divine Liberator, and the other the Chief 
of the Apostles, who establishes the liberty for which his 
predecessor had prepared the way. 

II. Let us consider some of the fruits of this Message, 
which has been well declared to be the most important word 
spoken in this land since the Declaration of Independence. 

First, it will give clearness and tone to the national mind 
as to the character of slavery. That mind has been exceed- 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 277 

ingly beclouded and debased by the presence and power of 
this sin. This debasement has not been confined to the region 
where it especially dwells. Even in the Free States are 
still found those who have thought any words hostile to the 
institution harsh and fanatical. Though such words have 
only embodied the sentiment of the Church in all ages, from 
Moses to Wesley, though they are spoken in a community 
whose fathers, from conscientious and religious motives, abol- 
ished slavery, still, so fearfully have we been poisoned with 
this malaria, that any strong and bracing word of truth 
seemed deadly and dangerous. 

Hawthorne tells a story of an Italian physician who trained 
himself so that he could live a sickly life in a garden full of 
poisonous plants, whose effluence was fatal to all others. If 
another approached the inclosure, he dropped dead. But the 
former breathed freely in its poisonous air. Mithridates, 
to avoid death by poison, by constant habit was enabled to 
eat harmlessly all manner of deadly and forbidden fruit. As 
a nation, we have walked in a garden of death ; we have 
lived on the fruit of the tree of death. In our insane lust 
of wealth and power, in our more insane fear of the slave- 
master and abhorrence of the slave, we have cried, — 

" Give me agates for my meat; 
Give me cantharides to eat; 
From all natures, sharp and slimy, 
Salt and basalt, wild and tame ; 
Tree of lichen, ape, sea-lion, 
Bird and reptile, be my game ; 
Ivy for my fillet-band, 
Blinding dog-wood in my hand. 
Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, 
And the prussic juice to lull me. 
Swing me in the Upas boughs, 
Vampire-fanned, when I carouse." 

No wonder that other nations looked on with amazement. 
No wonder that coming here they were stifled in the fatal 



278 THE DAY DAWNS. 

air. No wonder that the nation, at last, dropped, faint and 
dying, amid the miasma. Last winter, who believed, here 
or abroad, that we were a nation ? This Presidential voice 
will clear the air. Slavery may a little longer 

" from her horrid hair 
Shake pestilence and war," 

but only against our earnest efforts for its extinction. The 
''rights of mankind," which our fathers died to secure, 
which are the proudest words on the memorial stone of Lex- 
ington, the proudest words in our Declaration, — these funda- 
mental rights shall no longer be bartered away for aristocratic 
and tyrannic distinctions, based on the accidents of color 
and descent. Our fathers broke the chain that bound the 
poor white laboring man to his master ; we shall break the 
heavier chain that hangs upon the neck of the poor laborer 
whose skin is sometimes a little more discolored than our 
own. We shall fall back on first principles. We shall say 
with Burns, — • 

" That man to man shall brother be 
The whole world o'er." 

We shall feel as Jefferson did when he wrote, "All men 
are created equal." We shall confess with Paul that God 
has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the 
face of the earth. We shall say as Christ taught us and all 
mankind, "Our Father who art in heaven," and feel as He 
taught us to feel — that our neighbor is he whom we most 
unrighteously loathe and despise ; and only by treating^ him 
as our equal and our brother, can we be the children of our 
Father, or the brethren of our Savior. 

The word of authority was needed ; a word from a high, 
from the highest place. Such a word is this. When heavy 
and pestilential airs cover the low places of the earth, only 
the winds that sweep from mountain summits can displace 
them. So does this word dispel the heavy fog that filled 



FIKST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 279 

many a heart with unnatural, with unchristian fear and hate. 
I stood one August morning on the summit of Mount Wash- 
ington. All the valleys below were pressed down with 
clouds of vapor a mile, thick. One could not see a score 
of feet beneath the peak. The winds raged, and great moun- 
tains of watery air, as huge, and seemingly as solid, as the 
hills they covered, moved over the face of the motionless 
ocean as icebergs over a waveless sea. But the instant 
that the sun arose, and fixed his eye on this mighty deep, 
the thick, oppressive air cleft asunder, the lowliest vales, 
with their trees and shrubs, and almost their very grass 
blades, stood forth to our view, defined and beautiful in the 
lustrous light. Upon those beneath, the sun undoubtedly 
shot down with equal suddenness and glory. So this dec- 
laration in favor of the abolishment of slavery pierces the 
mighty clouds of pride, and prejudice, and fear, that have 
hung heavily over the nation, and every eye sees clearly the 
great evil of slavery, and the necessity of its extirpation. 

Hitherto many had failed to see. The convictions, the in- 
stincts, in their nature in favor of universal freedom, the 
authentic tales of cruelty which the system produces, re- 
peated in thousands of instances, the political and infidel, 
though professedly religious, pretensions and progress of 
the slave power, its revolt and assault upon the government, 
even civil war, distress, and death, in all their horrors, found 
them stifled under the blinding vapor. This voice opens 
every eye, uplifts and regulates every conscience. No man 
here, no man elsewhere in our land, can again say, without 
not only knowing, but confessing, that the "truth is not in 
him," Slavery is right, is divine, is for the best good of the 
African, though he be an American of ten generations, and 
nine tenths of him be Caucasian. No one will wrest the 
Scriptures to its defense, or wrest democracy to its defense. 
That mean and miserable work this single word has de- 
stroyed forever. 



280 THE DAY DAWNS. 

Second. It will hasten the downfall of the rebellion. It 
will do this in three ways. 1. It will make other nations 
our allies, and compel their governments to cease to flatter 
the slavocrats with the hope of foreign support. They have 
lived on this hope. Mr. Yancey pleaded with the ministers 
of the British government that our government was as pro- 
slavery as theirs. The English journals in their interest have 
made like charges. This message, followed by correspond- 
ent action on the part of Congress, stops that argument, 
and, with it, all possible hope of success from abroad. For 
all Christian Europe hates slavery ; God in Christ has wrought 
that work there perfectly. Though defective in the great 
democratic truth of equal rights, yet from emperor to serf 
they abhor human bondage, and no government, how much 
soever it may desire the disruption of this Union, is strong- 
enough to interfere in the struggle in the phase it is now 
assuming. The people even of Spain and Austria, much 
more of France and England, would hurl from their thrones 
a monarch who should presume to fight for slavery. 

2. Again : the word robs them of support at home by con- 
ciliating all classes, who, through desire or through fear, 
seek to support the government. The loyal slaveholder sees 
in his partial remuneration an advantage to him. For this 
so-called property is utterly valueless now, and never can 
be marketable again. I was told, when in Maryland, of a 
man for whom two thousand four hundred dollars was paid, 
not eighteen months before. He is worth to-day less than 
a Confederate note of a hundred dollars. The disloyal slave- 
holder may even hope for compensation under a proclamation 
of amnesty, or by the acts of his legislature, which the mes- 
sage does not propose to override. The various classes of 
the North will also agree. The extreme abolitionist, be- 
cause he clearly sees at this new turn in the road, the depot 
which he has so long toiled to reach ; the anti-abolitionist, 
if any such still exist, because it advises compensation, and 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 281 

suggests the possibility of delay in the full execution of the 
work, and respects the verbal distinctions they cleave to', 
though they no longer really exist. The men of peace will 
approve it, because it makes for peace ; the men of war, 
because they desire war only to break down the rebellion, 
and that step is soonest reached by such a measure. The 
great support, therefore, which the rebel cause has received 
from these varied and conflicting sources will cease, and with 
it much of their hold on power. 

3. But a third and not unimportant reason why this will 
hasten the overthrow of the rebellion is, because of its 
effect on the slaves. Hitherto they could only see by faith 
that the war would work out their liberation. Now sight 
confirms faith. The tidings of this message will go by the 
underground telegraph to every slave cabin. Thousands 
this day have lifted up their heads in joy, for they see that 
their redemption draws nigh. They are not ignorant of the 
movements about them. When I entered Annapolis, with 
the first regiments that hastened to the rescue of the capital 
last April, I found the slave already aware of the real cause 
of our coming. They alone of all the people came out of 
their cabins on the road, and saluted the soldiers. At Wash- 
ington I asked an old colored man if he knew what all this 
meant. "0, yes," said he, "it is for liberty." "Liberty 
for whom?" "To the white and the black," he replied. 
At a slaveholder's mansion, near Annapolis Junction, where 
we stopped for supper, the slaves, who were gathered near 
the barns, received us with smiles and cordial welcomes, 
and when we shouted for Union and Liberty, they respond- 
ed with enthusiastic applause. While at the Relay, I heard 
a soldier of this regiment say to a colored man of Balti- 
more, "You also attacked us." "It is false!" he instantly 
answered, forgetting all about his skin, and his " natural in- 
feriority ; " "not a colored man in Baltimore touched you. 
We knew what you were coming for. Five thousand of 



282 THE DAY DAWNS. 

us would have defended you had we had arms." Like tes- 
timonies abound. This message will confirm their hopes. 
They see their pra} T ers are being answered. 

The year of God's redeemed is come. They could not 
rise, if they would, while every white man is especially armed 
and watchful. They will not now, as Freedom dawns peace- 
fully upon them. But the power of their tyrants will be 
broken by these new hopes implanted in their victims, and 
they will hasten to make their peace with the government, 
and with those whom they have so brutally treated and de- 
spised. Thus will this word bring to a speedier close the 
already waning power of the rebellion. 

4. But another great blessing which it foretells is the 
unification of the Republic. We have never been, in reality, 
one people. Blood has not separated us ; for the French 
of Indiana and Illinois have coalesced with the English of 
Massachusetts ; the Dutch of New York with the Irish of 
New Hampshire. Later immigrations flow into the ancient 
ones, and into each other, easily, spontaneously. Natural 
boundaries have not separated us. New Jersey is separated 
from Pennsylvania by more natural boundaries than Penn- 
sylvania is from Maryland. Iowa and Maine are closer 
together than Ohio and Kentucky. There has been only 
one distinction, and that was slavery. Slavery, a peculiar 
institution, makes its supporters a peculiar people, though 
not the people of God. 

"The Baltimore Christian Advocate," but a year ago, 
dwelt on the identity of the Southerners and their disparta- 
tion from the North in thought, life, and religion. They 
were excluded from the civilized world for their leprosy, and 
sought to make their infamy an honor. This was so at the 
beginning. John Adams calls them, in his day, the "Barons 
of the South." South Carolina and Georgia assumed the 
airs of aristocracy even thus early. The patents of this 
nobility have been vastly increased since that time, and 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 283 

their pride proportionally. We can never be one people, 
truly and perfectly, till slavery is abolished. Some of our 
citizens, of little money and less brains, foolishly- suppose 
the Middle States more like the South than they are like 
New England ; and others, more foolish, rejoice over this 
fancied resemblance. The truth is, that all the Free States 
are substantially identical. For they are alike in the great 
fundamental idea of free labor, of the dignity of labor, of 
the rights of labor. They are distinguished among them- 
selves by grades of development of intellect, enterprise, and 
morality ; yet they are fundamentally one. Hence, you can 
elect a mechanic to represent you in Congress, a mechanic 
to represent your State in the Senate, a mechanic for your 
mayor.* Hence you see the strong arm of a laborer, carved 
in stone, on the front of one of your costliest buildings, and 
the sign of a banking institution, too, that represents prima- 
rily capital, and not labor. These sights are not seen south 
of Mason and Dixon's line. All the Slave States are alike 
in despising labor. There, the holder, breeder, seller, of 
human beings, — he is the great man ; the mechanic is the 
slave. Bishop Polk oivns his farmers, blacksmiths, carpen- 
ters, masons, tailors, milliners, dress-makers, and cooks. 
What he does not want of these laborers he sells, as we 
do our cattle and horses, if we have more than are necessary 
for carrying on our farms. 

I talked with a slave at Annapolis Junction, who said he 
carried on two farms for his owner, and never had a dollar 
for his sagacious and constant oversight. The tea and su- 
gar on his cabin table, his wife, a free woman, bought with 
her labor. Is there a man capable of carrying on two farms 
for a Northern gentleman, thus paid ? Is not such a super- 
intendent always a respectable, often a leading, and even a 
comparatively wealthy member of the community ? Such 

* Such was the case at that time in Newark and New Jersey. Every 
one of these offices was filled by a mechanic. 



284 THE DAY DAWNS. 

is the universal state of affairs there. This must be changed. 
The great word of the Sixth of March initiates the reform. 
Free institutions and free labor will move southward. Man 
will be treated as man, woman as woman. A fair day's 
wages for a fair day's work, will be the motto there as here. 
Politics will conform to it. Said a friend of mine, a pay- 
master in the army, to a Maryland machinist, " Why don't 
you get up a workingman's candidate for Congress, instead 
of taking one of these slaveholding aristocrats ?" The idea 
struck him as preposterous. Such an attempt would be 
laughed to scorn. But when slavery is suppressed, this 
universal custom of the l^orth will obtain there. 

So will the religion of the North move southward. They 
have a religion of their own. In it no stranger can meddle. 
An Episcopalian may be high church or low church here and 
in England. In the South a new Article, not written in the 
Book of Common Prayer, is introduced, which outvalues 
all that are inscribed there. You must say, " I believe in 
Slavery," or all the Apostles' Creed goes for nothing. If 
you say that, you are still Orthodox, although a heretic as 
to all the rest of the creed. So is it with Presbyterianism. 
You can go from Geneva, through Scotland, to Philadelphia, 
and be an accepted Presbyterian. Cross the unseen line 
and all your theology is changed to one dogma, and that a 
doctrine of devils. So the Methodists drop Wesley and As- 
bury, and follow diabolic fables that have not the merit of 
being even cunningly devised. Anti-slavery, inherited from 
their fathers, still lives in a part of the border. But it is 
like the shoal edge of the ocean, barren sand, always wet, 
often under water, and never harvestable, while it rapidly 
slopes down into the unfathomable gulf beyond, of abomi- 
nable doctrines, and hardly more abominable practices. 

This region must be regenerated. The waves of liber- 
ty, a Nile of wealth, must fertilize this American Sahara. 
Churches, schools, workshops and farms, must be filled with 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 285 

free worshipers, students, toilers. A vast country remains 
to be subdued — the richest and most beautiful in America. 
It is trodden under foot of the Gentiles. The voice of those 
who are defrauded of their wages cries to God, and He has 
come down to see if it be according to their cry. He finds 
they told the truth. Therefore will He destroy those hus- 
bandmen, and give that vineyard to others ? Their enslaved 
neighbors shall till their own fields in freedom and happiness. 
Their poor white neighbors, now more despised than their 
slaves, will rise in intelligence, virtue, competence, and pow- 
er. The great emigration of Europe and the North will 
pour over the wilderness, and it shall blossom as the rose. 
It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the 
excellency of Carmel and Sharon. The victims of this ter- 
rific cruelty will at last be free, prosperous, and happy. 
The husband and wife, the babes and their mother, will 
dwell in peaceful and blessed communion. No more scour- 
ging lash, no more lordly lust, no more riven hearts, no more 
ignorance, idleness, or misery. No more such sights will 
be seen as would have made the Savior weep more bitterly 
than he did over Jerusalem. A colored man in Baltimore, 
now free, told me that he once received three hundred lashes 
for unintentional delay in attending to a tobacco field on 
Sunday. A member of the Baltimore Conference, a Virgin- 
ian by birth, and an ardent abolitionist, told me that he knew 
a Baptist deacon, in the Shenandoah Valley, who carried the 
scalp of a slave at his saddle-bow, and a Presbyterian elder, 
who had taken off the skin of a slave, tanned it, covered 
his saddle with it, and rode upon it. Nat Turner's skin 
was cut up into relics, which ladies proudly carried ; and 
John Brown's son stands in the Medical College of Win- 
chester, a proof of the worse than Indian brutality of South- 
ern gentlemen, nay, rather of Southern fiends. For they are 
not even men that can commit such barbarities. 



286 THE DAY DAWNS. 

These barbarities shall come to a perpetual end with the 
monslrum horrendum out of whose loins they have sprung. 
Some, in the last resort of unbelief, have asked wildly, " What 
are you going to do with these freedmen ? " We answer, 
" Let them alone." 

They will work ; they will sell the produce of their farms ; 
they are the most intelligent, they are almost the only intelli- 
gent, farmers of the South. They will be no burden to the 
government. Let their friends do as they are now doing. 
Let teachers and guides go forth as that ship-load went last 
week.* That was an event not second to this message. A 
new civilization went to South Carolina with them, and 
its results will speedily prove their fitness for freedom, to 
the overwhelming of our mean and wicked prejudice, with 
shame and everlasting contempt. It may even be shown 
that the superior race is the enslaved race ; that as it was 
in Egypt, in Babylon, in Rome, so is it in the South. As 
from this class came, anciently, generals, scholars, poets, 
emperors, and statesmen, so may they yet, from this de- 
spised and down-trodden people. We may loathe this word, 
and him that declares it, as the Jews did Paul, when he 
asserted the equality of the Gentiles with themselves ; but 
we cannot gainsay or deny it. They are of our blood, of 
the blood of Adam, of Noah, of Christ. They will prove 

* The first vessel that carried out men and women for the establish- 
ment of schools and churches, and the organization of labor in the South, 
was the steamer Atlantic. She left New York, March 3, 1862, for Port 
Royal, South Carolina, with about sixty persons, under the superintend- 
ence of Edward L. Pierce, of Boston, and Rev. Mansfield French, of 
New York. Among them were fourteen ladies. She carried farming 
utensils, seeds, sewing machines, books, clothing, etc. All who joined 
the company took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, and against 
all its enemies. This was the beginning of that emigration which has 
gone on so greatly since, and will proceed yet more rapidly under the 
peaceful protection of the future government. This "Atlantic" was 
the Mayflower that assured a New South after the Puritan and perfect 
pattern. 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 287 

their honorable right to it in God's good time and way. A 
slaveholder's son in Maryland confessed to me that he had 
first cousins who were slaves, and who were equally talented 
with their cousins who were free. The best of Caucasian 
blood flows in their veins. They will yet show that it has 
not degenerated by commingling with the equally excellent, 
if more torrid blood of Africa. 

But in the great uplifting of the Southern territory, this 
portion of the population will soon be lost sight of. Four 
millions, to the score of millions that will pour over that 
immense and beautiful country, will be less than the few 
thousands of them in New York to its myriad population. 
They will be merged in the great tides of life that will flow, 
freely and grandly, over all the continent. 

5. There are other and not valueless fruits of this pro- 
phetic word. If carried out, or replaced, as it will be, by 
more thorough measures,* it will restore the Republic to 
its position among the nations of the earth. It will prevent 
the absolutizing of America by putting offshoots of the effete 
and discrowned families of Europe upon thrones propped 
on foreign spears. It will give us full and mighty power 
against the monarchical systems of Europe. It will abase 
the high heads that maintain, among men and Christians, 
factitious distinctions based on blood, not brains, on lineage, 
not character, on rank, not worth. All these will go down 
before the simple, majestic effulgence of a perfectly free and 
equal people. Therefore let us laud and magnify the name 
of our God. He has made us, who were less than a century 
ago no people, the people of God. He brought a vine out of 
Egypt, a vassalized, rank-ridden, priest-ridden Europe, and 
planted it in this goodly land. The wild boar of slavery 
has trodden it down and mastered it, and now is seeking 

* The more thorough measure by which it was replaced was the 
Proclamation, six months after, of universal and unconditional eman- 
cipation. 



288 THE DAY DAWNS. 

to tear it up by the roots. Our God will not suffer it to be. 
He may chastise us, but He will not destroy. The signs 
of the times are propitious. The armies of the aliens are 
put to flight ; distress has seized hold upon them. They are 
suffering the just judgment of God. " They have called evil 
good, and good evil ; they have put darkness for light, and 
light for darkness, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. 
They have justified the wicked for a reward, and taken away 
the righteousness of the righteous from him." Alas, how 
many innocent victims of their passions lay this last sin to 
their charge ! "Therefore," says God, " as the fire devour- 
eth the stubble, and as the flame consumeth the chaff, so 
their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go 
up as dust ; because they have cast away the law of the 
Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of 
Israel, therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against 
His people ; He hath stretched forth His hand against them 
and hath smitten them, and their carcasses were torn in the 
midst of the streets. And in this day He roars against 
them like the roaring of the sea ; and if we look unto their 
land, behold, darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened 
in the heavens thereof." 

It may be long ere this Presidential word shall be brought 
to perfection. . It may be refused by the Pharaoh hardness 
of border slaveholders, in order that His strong arm may 
give the more speedy and more complete liberation which 
he threatens. The struggle with the hoary and haughty 
sin may be long, and fierce, and bloody. Seven years of 
suffering and death passed before the. Declaration became 
the Deliverance. We have been partaker of their sins, and 
the measure of the judgment we have meted out to our en- 
slaved brethren shall be measured to us again. We must 
suffer in our basket and store ; we must suffer in our hearts, 
in our anxiety for those who go out from us to keep the foe 
from ravaging our firesides, in the dreadful griefs of wife, 



FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 289 

and mother, and child, over those who shall return no more. 
But yet we may rejoice that not all the desolations of war, 
nor even its chief miseries, are permitted by our loving and 
just God to come upon us. We may especially rejoice that 
His chastisements are leading us to repentance, that we are 
not only fasting before Him, but doing as He requires ; pre- 
paring to ''break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free." 
Then, after due infliction, after the godly sorrow has wrought 
its perfect work, after Congress and the legislatures of the 
guilt} 7 - States shall cooperate in this divine work, or the 
President shall himself decree liberty, and shall with his 
own hand break the shackles from every limb, then, as He 
has promised, He will surely perform ; " then shall thy 
light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall 
spring forth speedily. For thy righteousness shall go be- 
fore thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward, 
and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the 
earth ; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.' 7 Soon 
will the great Proclamation be answered by resounding 
praises from over the sea ; sooner, by more grateful and 
more ringing hallelujahs from our Southern shores ; and our 
nation, delivered from its enemies, delivered of the sin which 
has brought her to the verge of destruction, shall resume 
her place, shall ascend to a far higher place, among the 
nations of the earth. Her enemies at home, her rivals 
abroad, shall bend down to the soles of her feet, and all 
the other powers of earth shall 

" perforce 

Sway to her from their orbits as they move, 

And girdle her with music." 

Standing on the cheery hight to which the great words 
of our leader have lifted us, I have striven to speak, as Paul 
did in the storm, words of truth and of encouragement. 
The Ship of State, the Ship Union and Liberty, shall not go 
down. There shall be a loss, a blessed and eternal loss, of 
19 



290 THE DAY DAWNS. 

the accursed lading, but the ship shall be saved. We are 
flinging overboard that which caused the storm ; we shall 
soon be able to sing, with our finest lyrist : — 

" The good Ship Union's voyage is o'er; 

At anchor safe she swings, 
And loud and clear, with cheer on cheer, 

Her joyous welcome rings. 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! it shakes the wave, 

It thunders on the shore ; 
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, 

One nation evermore." 



LETTER TO THE LONDON 
WATCHMAN/ 






ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

To the Editors of The Watchman : — 

AVIXG been lately permitted to make a brief visit 
to the land of my ancestors, and to behold for 
myself the spots made memorable by past deeds, 
as well as the great centers of present life and 
duty, I unexpectedly found all eyes turned away from their 
own things, historic or living, and fixed intently on those 
of America. 

I could not ask a peasant the way, or follow a verger in 
his tour of curiosities, or "take mine ease at mine inn, ;? but 
that, if they learned that I was an American, they instantly 
plied me with questions as to our present and prospective 
condition. The fullness with which our news is detailed, 
the frequency, elaborateness, and intensity of the leaders in 
your journals, the articles in every magazine and review, 

* Letter to the London Watchman, written from Paris, July 4, 1862. 
See Xote XL 

(291) 



292 LETTER TO THE LOXDOX WATCHMAN. 

the excitement attending parliamentary debates on our mu- 
tual relations, — all show the depth and fervor of this feeling. 

The Times attempts to ridicule us, by saying that we suf- 
fer all the extremes of intermittent fever, as conflicting re- 
ports rapidly succeed each other. It is properly so ; for 
we feel that we are hanging over the sick bed of an intensely 
loved nationality — sick almost unto death; and every symp- 
tom, favorable or otherwise, naturally excites us. We are 
giving of the fruit of our body for the saving of our nation, 
and personal feelings are thus mingled profoundly in the 
struggle. But I see that here, without any such causes, 
almost as great excitement follows every important event ; 
and British nerves respond as keenly as American to the 
varying telegrams that sweep over them. 

I have found, with this deep and wide-spread interest, 
two other facts, painful to a lover of both England and 
America — to a lover of liberty and humanity. They are 
a want of sympathy with the United States, and an appar- 
ently intentional blindness as to the cause of the rebellion, 
and the course the government is pursuing against not only 
the revolt, but its primal and only cause. With few and 
most honorable exceptions, the tone of inquiry lacked that 
of sympathy. It was curiosity, not love, that prompted 
the querist. Especially was the ignorance of intelligent 
men of the connection of slavery with the rebellion, and of 
the movements of the nation ag-ainst that sin, most evident 
and most deplorable. This lasf, I consider, arises from the 
first ; for hostility or indifference of feelings will breed igno- 
rance. And yet the latter affects, if it does not create, the 
former. 

Will you permit me to attempt to remove this ignorance 
from any of your readers who may be thus affected ? I am 
certain that, if removed, the fountains of sympathy will 
break forth. Will you allow me, therefore, to state in your 
columns the American cause as it appears to Americans. It 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 293 

may possibly clear away from some minds the clouds that 
darken them, so that they may see light in the light which 
the providence of God so powerfully casts upon the Ameri- 
can people. 

I do not seek to defend America at the English bar. I 
solicit no favors for her at its hands. She needs no defense. 
She seeks no favors. She asks for neither material aid nor 
moral support. She had a right to expect both. She would 
have received them gratefully, had they been, as they ought 
to have been, instantly and spontaneously offered ; but she 
has never coveted them. Not that she despises the judg- 
ment of others ; but when that judgment conflicts with the 
decrees of divine duty, that seem to her to be almost audibly 
uttered from heaven, so clearly, so powerfully do they ad- 
dress her, she can say, with a feeling akin to the Apostle, 
"It is a small thing to be judged of man's judgment," 
whether single, or associated and nationalized : " He that 
judgeth me is the Lord." A great nation is not to be tried 
and condemned by many or few hostile or friendly contem- 
poraries. " God is judge ; He putteth down one and set- 
teth up another." To Him we appeal. 

It is because she is so unfairly, so criminally, placed be- 
fore the great reading, the still greater hearing, public of 
England, by almost all your influential journals and states- 
men, that I ask the privilege of a hearing. It is because, 
rather, of the great interests of humanity, present and future, 
that are involved in this struggle. The position of your 
journal — more appreciative, and hence more sympathetic, 
than most of your neighbors — leads me to hope that my 
words will be given to your readers. They shall be written 
in all fairness and kindness of feeling, whatever plainness 
and honesty of speech they may be constrained to exhibit. 

One question, more than all others, is asked by all kindly 
or hostile Englishmen. It is, " What is the war for ? " 
They are in as great a state of perplexity as was Southey's 



294 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

child over Marlborough's famous victory. I can appreciate 
the laureate's difficulty in attempting to clear up the mind 
of his child. And, in the fact that the second, if not the 
greatest, of England's generals, and the one to whom she 
gave her most splendid testimonials, can give no reasons 
for his fighting, that the next generation shall be able to 
understand, I see the folly of endeavoring to establish the 
righteousness of the American cause on any other than en- 
during foundations. The rebellion began, and has been 
waged, solely in the interests of Slavery. There is no need 
of any argument in America to sustain this. There is no 
man nor woman, North or South, bond or free, white or 
black, that does not know it. And yet the rebels, and their 
allies of the press, and of Parliament, — allies, I am sorry 
to say, some of whom are world-famous abolitionists, — 
have had the effrontery to say that Slavery was not involved 
in the struggle ; that other interests caused the revolt — 
the tariff, or natural alienation of the people, or oppression 
of minQrities. This is all chaff. We are one people, far 
more than England and Scotland, by marriage, emigration, 
language, interest, and feeling. Slavery, and slavery alone, 
has attempted our disruption. I beg you to consider these 
few facts as illustrative of this truth. 

The slaveholders demanded, and secured, recognition in 
the Constitution. But slavery being given up, from con- 
scientious motives, in the States of one half of the Lmion, 
and being impoverishing in its nature, it was expected that 
it would soon cease everywhere ; especially as the foreign 
slave trade was forbidden. But England, through her in- 
ventions, becoming the great cotton manufacturing nation, 
and the slaveholding States becoming the great cotton rais- 
ing region, slaves rapidly rose in value, and with this in- 
crease of wealth came an increased importance to this inter- 
est. England's factories alone made this system mighty. 

With this prosperity came also another power, working 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 295 

on the conscience of the people, demanding the suppression 
of the iniquity. To this cry, we are happy to say, England 
contributed. Had she done so by refusing slave-labor cot- 
ton, we should have long since, and peaceably, extirpated 
the evil. The slave power demanded privileges not granted 
them in the Constitution. The free sentiment resisted, and 
in many ways, and with varying success, for twenty-five 
years the conflict has been waged. At last, and for ten 
years, not a single point of prominent and vital politics has 
divided the nation, except as connected with slavery. In 
1860 the slaveholders refused to take Mr. Douglas as their 
candidate, because they knew that his doctrine of popular 
sovereignty, backed by the growing sentiment of the North, 
would be, ultimately, as fatal to slavery as the positions of 
the Republicans. They spurned him, though with him they 
could, undoubtedly, have retained their power, as his popu- 
lar vote was over one million three hundred thousand, and 
was second only to Mr. Lincoln's. With Mr. Breckinridge's 
vote he would have had a quarter of a million more than 
any other candidate. Thus they revolted from the Demo- 
cratic party, and set up as their platform a slave code in 
the Territories, and slave trade in all the States — that is, 
the right of free transit of slaves through all the States, and 
protection to that property, as to all other property, in the 
Territories. Defeated, as they expected to be, they revolted 
from the government, as they had intended and prepared to 
do. Drunk with long-continued success and dominion, they 
despised the North ; despised the party and principles that 
had legitimately and constitutionally risen to power ; and 
fancied that, affrighted by their warlike threats and prepa- 
rations, and weakened by internal dissensions, we should 
speedily submit, and they could return to their seats of 
supremacy, or erect themselves into an independent nation, 
without opposition, almost with the whining solicitation of 
their foes. They never thought of tariff, of free trade, of 



296 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

majorities trampling on the rights of minorities, of the nat- 
ural desire for different peoples to be independent of each 
other. These are cries got up afterward, and for a foreign 
market. At home it was Slavery, and only Slavery. 

It seems unnecessary to quote the words of their so-called 
" Vice-President/' declaring this to be the corner-stone of 
the new nation ; to refer to the striking fact, that this class, 
and this class only, with their adherents and subjects, re- 
volted at the election of a representative of the opposite 
sentiment, whose only vital article was the prevention of 
the further growth of the system. Their instinct is a suffi- 
cient proof of the truth of this position. They knew that 
if they recognized an anti-slavery government, their domin- 
ion was at an end. They. revolted before it was established. 
They revolted only because it was to be established. They 
acted wisely, in the light of the wisdom of this Avorld. Their 
supremacy was gone the moment they bowed to the sover- 
eignty of the anti-slavery sentiment ; and an evil principle, 
in man or state, cannot long exist except as supreme. They 
said, " We are strong enough to set up for ourselves. We 
will never submit to a party led by Messrs. Seward, and 
Chase, and Sumner." So they flung to the breeze the black 
flag of human bondage, and arrayed their legions under its 
accursed folds. 

A simple illustration may set this more clearty before 
you, if it should need additional light. Suppose a great 
conflict had been raging in England for thirty years, between 
the principles of democracy and aristocracy ; suppose that 
after many fluctuations in Parliament, and before the people, 
the democratic party should peacefully and constitutionally 
secure the passage of a Bill forbidding- the increase of the 
peerage, and that, thereupon, the opposite party should re- 
volt from the government and the sovereign head that made 
the Bill a law : could anybody doubt why they had rebelled ? 
Could anybody doubt that democracy had achieved a great 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 297 

victory — a victory that extinguished the power of its rivals, 
and was certain, in a few years, to abolish their whole sys- 
tem ? Would any pretense of difference of blood, and de- 
sire for separate national existence, give their rebellion char- 
acter with a democratic people ? What would you say if 
America should be deluded by such appeals, should rec- 
ognize these aristocratic rebels as belligerents, and give 
them protection under guise of neutrality ; while leading 
New York democrats should send them guns and ammuni- 
tion, to defend themselves against their legitimate and dem- 
ocratic rulers ? What must America say, when an abolition 
government and nation recognize these supporters of slavery 
as legitimately rebellious, and permits her vessels full of arms 
to leave her ports for their aid ; and when, even, great Chris- 
tian, and — alas ! that I must say it — great Wesleyan, ab- 
olitionists are making fortunes through such atrocious coop- 
eration ? No blood-money wrung from the enforced toil of 
slaves is as bad as that. 

Slavery, then, is the cause — the only cause — of the re- 
bellion. To traffic in the bodies and souls of their brethren, 
to hold them as beasts, to use them for purposes infinitely 
worse than they use their vilest beasts, — for this they broke 
from the mildest and most liberal government that existed 
in the earth ; for this they are seeking its destruction. 
There is no difference in blood; Davis, Stephens, Slidell, and 
a host of others, are of Northern origin. All are of one 
European, one American blood. There is one, sole, terrible 
difference, — it is Slavery. 

But it is often said here, If slavery be the cause of the 
war, why does not the national government show it to be 
so, by striking directly at that system ? I answer,^ The 
assailant and thing assailed are two different things, and it 
is the first duty of the government to defend, and, if possi- 
ble, preserve that which is assailed. Slavery is the enemy. 
That which is attacked is the Union — that is, the govern- 



298 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

inent, the nationality of the United States. What she must 
first do is to defend that Union, and to preserve it from de- 
struction. Though slavery is the causa causans, yet what 
she does is something very different from what she is. The 
gold the thief steals is a different thing from the thievish 
disposition. The loser seeks his money before he aims to 
abolish the propensity that robbed him. Slavery stole our 
arms, forts, ammunition ; cast off the judicial, the executive., 
the entire national authority ; organized armies, and assumed 
the prerogatives of sovereignty. "What the government 
must do is, not first to abolish slavery, but to re-possess it- 
self of its property, re-assume its authority, and destroy the 
insurrectionary armies. 

Mr. Seward, the winter before the war began, well said 
that we must see what our enemies assail, if we would know 
what we should defend. They had ceased to oppose the 
anti-slavery policy in the Union, — they opposed the Union 
itself. The instincts of the people taught them that this 
was the point to defend. Hence their wonderful unanimity 
and enthusiasm for the Union ; hence innumerable flags 
blazed along every thoroughfare, reddened every house-top, 
hung over every door, window, and mantel ; children car- 
ried them in all their sports ; ladies' bonnets, gentlemen's 
neck-ties, children's dresses, all assumed the national colors 
— the symbol of the nation's life. They even replaced the 
more solemn drapery of the pulpit with their glowing col- 
ors, and above the steeple's electric finger, or the heavenly 
cross, they waved, instinct with spiritual, with divine life. 
In the sacred voluntaries of the sanctuary the "Star-span- 
gled Banner " was played; at every gathering its song was 
sung. This was not because of the especial beauty of its 
words or music ; but it was the song of the flag, and so of 
the Union. Such a fever, so unanimous, so instinctive, so 
mighty, was never before seen in history. The people knew 
what was attacked, and what to defend ; and they sprang 



ENGLAND AXD AMERICA. 299 

to its defense with a zeal immeasurable, with a wisdom from 
above. It would seem as if this mighty feeling had been 
providentially hidden in secret, so that it should not be 
weakened by preliminary conflicts ; that when it should ap- 
pear, the Southern sympathizer, who had prepared himself 
against the demands of freedom, and the timid conservative, 
who trembled at them, should both be swept into the cur- 
rent, and the one be filled with shame and silence, the other 
with unwonted zeal and heroism. So came this new descent 
of the Spirit of God on a praying and awaiting, but 
otherwise powerless, people, with the sound as of a mighty 
rushing wind, and it filled the whole place, the whole nation, 
with new, with divine life. 

This defense, of itself, without primarily attacking the 
animus of its assailants, has been the course of every wise 
nation and ruler, when like exigencies came upon them. 
The good sense of America is simply the common sense of 
the wOrld. England has suffered many insurrections. She 
never yet violently suppressed, or instantly attacked, the 
moving cause of any one of them. Ireland revolted under 
the lead of Eomanism. Her rebellion was subdued, her Pa- 
pacy pampered. The Sepoys revolted under the inspirations 
of Mohammedanism. Parliament makes no laws, generals 
strike no blows, at that superstition. William of Orange 
overthrows the legitimate king in the interests of Protes- 
tantism. He makes no edicts against the religion whose 
representative he had driven into exile, and whom he had 
dethroned, solely because of his adherence to that faith. So 
always did Eome, wise in the wisdom of government above 
all ancient nations. So, with equally consummate wisdom, 
acts America. 

But while this is her idea, — simple, easily, universally 
comprehended, — yet let it be considered, that, in the work- 
ing out of it, slavery inevitably, perhaps speedily, dies. 
Romanism did not long live a vigorous life in England, if 



300 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

William of Orange abstained from assailing it. Moham- 
medanism cannot long live in India, if its power is completely 
broken. Ireland would have long since been Protestant, 
had she been treated as an equal, and not as a conquered, 
people. So Slavery, girdled, humbled, powerless to restrain 
the liberty of speech and of the press, will speedily vanish. 
It may linger for a generation in a feeble, dying state. It 
may, and probably will, flee as in a night. It is crushed, it 
must die. Nothing- can save it but the success of the re- 
bellion, and that cannot save it ! The government is actu- 
ally, earnestly, entirely on the side of freedom. It has 
abolished slavery in the District of Columbia ; it has liber- 
ated thousands in the march of its armies ; it has given 
them freedom, work, and wages, and opened schools for 
their instruction in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and 
South Carolina. It has declared that Slavery shall never 
exist in its Territories, in language such as no other gov- 
ernment on earth uses. This is the preamble of her decree: 
" To the end that freedom may be, and remain forever, the 
fundamental law in all places whatsoever, so far as it lies 
within the power, or depends upon the action, of the gov- 
ernment of the United States to make it so." Such is the 
action of the government. It will go further, it will go 
to the uttermost, if the rebellion is not speedily overthrown. 
The struggle will never be ended by the success of the reb- 
els till this last remedy is tried. God may require this at 
our hands ; if so, it shall not be refused. The people are 
too determined to make any terms but those of submission ; 
and slaves will be freed, armed, and arrayed side by side 
with their white brethren, if in no other way the govern- 
ment can be preserved. 

This is the cause of this gigantic rebellion, as seen in the 
action both of rebel and loyal. The government steadily 
approaches that great magazine which they revolted to pre- 
serve. It may be compelled to put the torch to it. The 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 301 

explosion may be terrible, will be glorious. Four millions 
of men and women may enter into liberty with a Red Sea 
deliverance, with a Red Sea destruction of their oppressors. 
When God speaks to our Moses, "Say unto the people that 
they go forward/ 7 He will give the command, and they will 
march ; and if the cruel oppressors still retain their hard 
and impenitent hearts, they will sink like lead in the mighty 
waters. 

For this, be assured, is with the people of America a 
struggle for the highest national life. It is not a mere strug- 
gle for ordinary national being. They prize their Constitu- 
tion and Union not because they are, but because of what 
they embody and guarantee. They are the seat, the center, 
in their judgment, we may say in the judgment of the 
world, of the highest civil life. They are based on one 
maxim : the majority of the people shall govern, if they 
govern according to the letter of a just Constitution. If 
they violate that, the minority have a right to rebel. If 
the Constitution fails in any part, or transgresses the divine 
law, out of which all human law ought to flow, it provides 
for its peaceful amendment, so that its letter may ever con- 
form to the growing intelligence of the ages. Such a Con- 
stitution the world never saw before. If it be destroyed 
through the weakness of its friends and violence of its ene- 
mies, the cause of equal civil liberty fails in the world. This 
is the profound conviction of the American people ; it may 
be the offspring of vanity, but for it they are willing to spend 
the last drop of their blood and the last farthing of their 
treasure. Their reasoning is simple, it is sublime. It is 
this : Only two modes of government can exist among men, 
one based on the decision of the majority of the people, the 
other on a class, elect and separate. The first is our sys- 
tem. We believe it to be the right, and the only right one. 
It is assailed ; the minority refuse to abide by the decisions 
of the majority ; they take no peaceable ways of securing 



302 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

their rights professedly assailed, but scornfully, violently, 
and murderously throw off allegiance to the government. 
To permit this is to confess that we have ceased to be a 
nation. It is to substitute the other system of government 
for the one we have adopted. It is to say the minority 
rules, for it has its way, not we ours. That is only the old 
world system over again. The slaveholders are our nobles, 
we their serfs. Out of their number, after long conflict 
among themselves, may come a "William of Normandy, a 
Charlemagne, or a Napoleon, who will seize and transmit 
the regal power ; and democratic equality, representative 
and constitutional liberty, fade away from the earth. So 
they said, so felt. And, feeling thus, as one man they de- 
clared this first rebellion against their fundamental axiom 
shall be overthrown. If the majority use their power wrong- 
fully, revolution is just. But when used for liberty, for 
justice, for the best interests of the world, it shall not be 
trampled under foot by a despotism "built in the eclipse 
and rigged with curses dark." God helping us, this devil 
of an aristocracy shall not dethrone the angel of democracy. 
He will help iis, and Michael shall prevail over the dragon. 
It is not possible, it seems to me, for any European peo- 
ple thoroughly to apprehend the feelings of the American 
people in this great crisis of its history. They are on a 
lower plane of civil life. They are ruled over. "We are the 
rulers. They reverence a class; we the whole. They have 
no part, or the least possible, in the administration of affairs. 
We are the sources of administrative power, and our King 
and his Ministers are required every few years to submit 
themselves as our representatives to our judgment. We 
feel, therefore, precisely as a king feels when his crown is 
assailed. Himself and his family are chiefly in his mind. 
It was not the interests of the people that troubled Charles 
I., or James II., or Napoleon, or the King of Naples, or 
any dethroned or attacked monarch, but family interests. 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 303 

His crown is his fortune. To dethrone him is to rob him. 
Hence he fights for it. Hence he is careful to transmit it, 
if possible, to his children. So does every American feel. 
He is a sovereign. His sovereignty is assailed. He must 
defend it, even to the death, or he is a worm and no man. 
He must transmit this great inheritance to his children and 
his children's children. It is worth more than any crown 
or any kingly seat. Queen Victoria has no such gift for 
Albert Edward as the poorest man in America has for all 
his children. She can transmit authority over millions of 
subjects ; he, authority, with millions of equals, over his 
rulers. They are all of royal blood, all equal heirs to kingly 
honors. This may, and probably will, seem vain and child- 
ish to many of your readers ; so does a Christian's expe- 
rience to many a proud listener. But it is true, neverthe- 
less, and, like that, is in harmony with the profoundest 
reason. It is consistent, as we have seen, with the uni- 
versal instinct. We have no class. We had one. It 
has tried to do as they all have done elsewhere — assume 
rights above its fellows. We have risen upon it ; we shall 
grind it to powder. Its name shall rot. As William the 
Conqueror blotted out the great house of Alfred, and with 
it the royal dominion of the Anglo-Saxon blood, extermi- 
nating it so utterly that only French mottoes blaze on Eng- 
land's banners, and French phrases make its legislative wishes 
a law,* so shall this uprising of an aristocracy — of a cacoc- 
racy rather — be blotted out in America. Not by a selfish 
and cruel man, for his own selfish and cruel interests, but 
by a great people, for themselves, their children, and the 
world. For it is another peculiarity of American feeling, — 
in the opinion of others, perhaps also a vanity ; in their 
own, an inspiration, — that they are fighting the battle of 
the world. 

* The Queen, or her Minister, acknowledges the enactments of Parlia- 
ment by a French phrase — La Heine le veut. 



304 LETTEK TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

Great Britain, in her conflicts, is inspired by the cry of 
Nelson, " England expects every man to do his duty ; " 
France appeals to the glory of France ; America feels that 
she is struggling- for the rights of mankind. It is no new 
feeling with her. You will find it on the monument to her 
heroes that fell at Lexington, " Sacred to Liberty and the 
Rights of Mankind. ' ' You will find it in her Declaration of In- 
dependence. That great paper is the statement of the rights 
of all men. You will find it rooted and grounded in her 
earliest history. It inspired the Pilgrims of Plymouth, the 
settlers of Rhode Island, of Pennsylvania, of Maryland, of 
Georgia. It is on its greatest and probably final trial to-day. 
The war of the Revolution made her a nation. To become 
and be a nation, a people must first secure their liberty, 
then defend it from without and from within. America had 
secured hers after seven years of terrible suffering. She 
had maintained it, so that all the caste powers of the earth 
feared, if they did not respect her. In her unmailed arm 
they saw her sleeping thunders. With but the skeleton of 
a navy, with not a score of thousands in her army, she pro- 
tected her citizens, native or adopted, in every sea and 
under every flag. Now comes the assault from within. If 
she yields, if she is humbled, equal liberty disappears from 
the earth. " The bubble of democracy is broken," as Nes- 
selrode said, and kings and rulers may revel, unaffrighted by 
Belshazzar visions of dissolving kingdoms and vanishing 
scepters. 

She sees the eyes of the 2^oples of Europe fastened upon 
her, no less than those of their rulers. She knows that if 
any people are yet blind through ignorance and degradation, 
their children will come to her light. She knows God has 
lifted her up, for the world's benefit and blessing ; and, so 
knowing, a grander inspiration possesses her. She may be 
ridiculed for this. Yet she is not alone in her pride. One 
cannot read a British journal, or hear a British speech, or 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 305 

hardly open one of her books, where her greatness is not 
set forth in full if not fulsome phrase. France is as little 
afflicted with modesty. Both are partly right ; both have 
honorable qualities, and, in many things, an honorable fame. 
Yet the achievements and the liberties of America are far 
greater than theirs. France owes whatever of liberty or 
equality she possesses to America. America owes their 
germs to England, but their growth and greatness are her 
own. It is the seed of the age of Cromwell, first betrayed 
by him, and then trodden under foot by succeeding dynasties, 
which has found a good soil there, and is bringing forth 
fruit a hundredfold. It will be transplanted to Europe, 
and all nations shall sit under its blessed branches. 

For these armed and separated kingdoms must become 
peaceful, United, States. Destroy distinctions in society; 
make the ruler subject to a written Constitution ; choose 
him out of the people, to return in a brief time to the people ; 
in a word, make the people sovereign, and armies and arma- 
ments will cease. Terror of each other, wasteful expendi- 
tures to defend themselves against each other, yet heavier 
ones to maintain a costly and useless pomp of government, 
will also cease. England, like New York, will be simply a 
great State, with its governor and local administration of 
affairs. And New York is to-day as wisely and liberally 
governed as England ; far more liberally in the matter of 
education. Scotland, in like manner, will enjoy the bless- 
ings of a real and not, as now, a quasi independence and 
union. Ireland will have its governor elected by its people ; 
France, Austria, Italy, Spain, each theirs. Each is no 
larger, no better, than the States of the American Union. 
Each, I may proudly say, with all its great history, has 
no equal history ; for in none of them is the most vital of 
all social and civil duties — the education, the elevation, the 
liberty of all — so thoroughly carried out. These shall yet 
be one Republic, a European Union ; copying the American, 
20 



306 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

forerunning the World Republic. Call not this a fantasy. It 
is the democratic prophecy of England's laureate, drawn from 
our living example. It shall be fulfilled in the earth when — 

" The war drums beat no longer, and the battle flag is furled 
In the Parliament of Man — the federation of the "World ! 
Then the common sense of Most will keep a fretful realm in awe, 
And the holy earth will slumber, lapped in universal law." 

It is essential to this era of accomplished bliss that the 
American Republic be preserved ; for it is, what " Black- 
wood" has long jeeringly called it, " the Model Republic." 
Not that it is developed to the fullness of its own principles. 
This very conflict has been thrust upon it by Divine Prov- 
idence because it had become unfaithful to those principles. 
It had ceased to regard all men as equal. Through social, 
financial, and political interests it had been tempted to 
disregard the cry of the slave ; it had allowed his masters 
to rivet the chains which previous generations had cast 
upon them. God rose upon us in judgment. He made 
us feel that our boasted strength was perfect weakness ; 
that we should disappear as speedily as we had arisen, un- 
less we gave full scope and play to those principles which 
He had breathed into us, which were our breath of life, and 
by which alone we had become a living, national soul. 
Everybody saw it in the flashing of an eye ; and hence the 
unanimous cry, " The Union shall be preserved ; let Slavery 
die." This takes a much stronger form in most, but its 
lowest expression is this. 

We have yet a great work to do in this matter — a work 
which no European can comprehend, which almost every 
American yet shrinks from, but whose preliminary steps, to 
our honor it shall be said, we are willing to take, letting 
Providence direct the issue. It is this — the African race is 
in among us, in slavery or akin to it. It is unlike every 
other race, who are welcomed, whose lineage is speedily 
forgotten, and whose blood mingles freely each with each. 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA, 307 

The distinctions and pride of European races have totally 
disappeared there. I know eminent families in whose 
blood a half dozen of these races are represented. We 
therefore cease to talk of English, Irish, German, French, 
Celtic, Teutonic, or any such clannish blood. We call our- 
selves the Caucasian — the white race. Yet this is clannish. 
And as these narrow feelings dwell in European nationalities, 
so this like narrow, if larger, sentiment works in us. Now 
the problem is thrust upon us by Providence, of the relation 
of the Caucasian to the African race — the white to the 
black. Our fundamental and most vital theories require 
that we make no distinction ; that we be as unmindful of 
the accident of color as that of birth or tongue. But our 
feelings are powerfully averse to the conclusions to which 
we are thus driven. We cannot deny our foundation princi- 
ples ; we cannot instantly overcome the repugnance of 
generations. 

It will not do for Europeans to say, We have overcome it ; 
there is no distinction of color here. This is not quite true. 
I saw but three colored men in England, and they were all 
engaged in menial occupations, and one was dragging his 
heavy mistress round the streets — a service to which no 
Southern slave was ever humiliated. I have seen like few 
in France, and in no case have I seen gentlemen and ladies 
freely associating with them. They seem to be alone. At 
the Madaleine an elegantly dressed lady of color sat alone, 
and though in a most eligible seat and a crowded assembly, 
the chairs near her were left vacant. 

But if received, they are only admitted to the lower 
grades. Let us see them in your House of Commons, in 
your House of Lords, generals in your army, riding in state 
and authority above the people. Let your prince follow the 
greater of Hebrew princes, and make a daughter of the 
dark race the sharer of his throne, and you would see 
whether England was as free from prejudice as she boasts. 



308 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

If every sixth person in Great Britain was more or less 
African ; if, in some comities, two out of every three were 
of this color ; if you, that were white, had imported them or 
their ancestors as property, and still regarded them as such ; 
or if, becoming weaned, by Providential dispensation, from 
that conviction, you were instantly required to look upon 
them as equals, to grant them all rights and privileges, 
social and civil ; yea, more, if you were required to place 
them in your ruling class, to make them your nobles and 
kings, you would have some idea of the work of America. 

She can have no lower class. She cannot, by virtue of 
her very nature, persist in distinguishing between men on 
account of complexion. She knows no Europe, no Asia, no 
America, before the Law ; she must know no Africa. Yet 
this non-recognition brings in its shadowy train many a yet 
abhorrent recognition. If all avenues are thrown open, who 
knows whither they will mount ? Hence her principles and 
her feelings are engaged in a terrific struggle. Nothing but 
the danger of losing her own liberties could have made her 
grant the African his. Nothing but the sacrifice of his own 
equality would make a white citizen admit the black as a 
sharer. The slaveholders had an immense leverage in the 
depth and universality of this sentiment. They believed the 
people would prefer them as rulers to the admission of 
Africans as equals. The people have rejected them, in view 
of the possibility, the probability, of the latter alternative. 
This is far from being settled ; but the first steps are taken. 
Many seek to expatriate the negro ; but he will not go, and 
they dare not drive him out. Hence they wait the move- 
ments of Providence. It may be that higher than all their 
thoughts, far beyond all their desires, we are working out 
another problem that must be solved before the Millennium 
comes. It may be that the unity, as well as the equality, of 
the human race is to be first reestablished in America. The 
dispersion of Babel, continued for thousands of years, yet 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 309 

potent in all the earth, may cease there first. To her may 
the gathering of all the nations be. The extreme races of 
mankind are forced together in a land whose greatest, all- 
engrossing idea, is the perfect equalit} 7 of all men. They are 
being welded in the fiery furnace of war, and weakness, and 
sorrow. They may become one and indivisible. If so, and 
if, being so, the central idea of her nationality is unweak- 
ened, if all men, of whatever shade or origin, move freely 
in the great currents of social and civil life, then has 
she indeed a high, the highest possible honor. Then will 
she be the guide and example of the world. At present 
it must be honestly said, she desires no such honor. It 
is a greatness, of the kind which Bacon says is thrust 
upon man. But she is determined to be faithful to her 
principles in view of even such a possibility. The time will 
come when she will hail it as a privilege. Europeans of the 
higher and middle classes, even, shrink to-day from such 
relations with their own blood in the lower classes with un- 
utterable abhorrence. They can throw no stones at Ameri- 
cans. What fearful processes our Creator may employ to 
break up all these prejudices, everywhere prevailing, He 
only knows. They must be abolished ; for He Himself 
makes no such distinction among the children of Adam. 
They must be like Him in this regard in respect to each 
other. 

It is not necessary for me to say that we do not con- 
demn the course of all the citizens of Britain because we 
must that of their government. We gratefully recognize 
the sympathy of not a few of her eminent and private men. 
We gladly commend the foresight, wisdom, as well as con- 
stant abolitionism of George Thompson ; the bold and true 
democratic utterances of John Bright ; the faithful and able 
services of the Star and the News, and of a few other 
sheets in the minor cities of the kingdom. We rejoice 
that Dr. Jobson, and William Arthur, and Robinson Scott 



310 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

have not failed us in this hour, but have steadily approved 
our course, and confidently awaited our success. 

Let it also be remembered that America does not re- 
fuse to recognize any excellences in England, though- her 
leading journals and statesmen find it very difficult to 
see any good in America. She acknowledges her indebted- 
ness to the men who wrested the Magna Charta from an 
unwilling despot ; to the greater men of later date, Hamp- 
den, Yane, Russell, Sydney, Granville Sharpe, Erskine, 
Fox, Wilberforce, and many others, who, by their labors, 
dangers, and in not a few cases by their martyrdom, ad- 
vanced the cause of human rights not only in Britain, but 
throughout the world. She rejoices that the encroachments 
of aristocracy and monarchy on the liberties of the people 
have thus been resisted and beaten back, and that these 
powers have been at least girdled and limited. These are 
proud names, which she delights to honor. They have 
labored, and she enters into their labors, not to revel idly 
in the fruit of their toil, but to carry forward the work they 
so perilously, so gloriously begun. A saying of Algernon 
Sydney is the motto of Massachusetts — the spirit of 
Sydney is the spirit of America. There these great Britons 
find a more congenial home than in their own yet half- 
liberated land. There it is that Milton's spirit, as well as 
language, is the mother tongue. Every heart beats in 
unison with his principles ; every institution conforms to 
their high behests. What is discordant must disappear, 
what concordant must go on to perfection. 

Neither does America quarrel with the crowned heads of 
Europe because they are crowned. She has had imbecility, 
if not treachery, in some whom she had appointed to main- 
tain her authority. She knows that with the most irre- 
sponsible powers an Antonine ruled wisely. She acknowl- 
edges the good sense and admirable virtues of Victoria, and 
rejoices that she feels the gratitude, as a mother and a 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 311 

sovereign, which her government, as subjects, have forgot- 
ten. She recognizes the consummate tact of Napoleon, the 
wisdom of Victor Emanuel, and the larger, because more 
liberal, nature of Alexander of Russia, — more worthy than 
the first of that name to be called Alexander the Great. Yet 
these exceptional cases cannot blind her eyes to the wrong- 
fulness of the system on which, though not of which, they 
flourish. As excellent have been not a few slaveholders. 
Does England therefore approve of that institution ? So she 
feels that the structure of society on this basis is wrong, and 
that, as great and virtuous, far more so, as a whole, would 
their rulers be, if from and with the people. 

It only needs a Washington and Jefferson to prove this. 
They will appear when the people shall call for them ; and 
when that call is made, you, too, may feel the throes of 
civil cpnvulsions. They have always attended the birth 
of new liberties. England, France, Italy, have organized 
in the State the new demands of human nature only with 
.fierce civil wars. It seems to be a necessity laid upon man 
that every triumph of Freedom must be through blood. 
Would that the powers now leagued against her here would 
take warning from the fate of their natural allies in America, 
and yield without resistance to her divine demands. But it 
is not probable that they will thus learn wisdom. Wrong 
power never has. It has always to be overthrown by armed 
right. Sydney's and Massachusetts' motto is painfully true : 
Ease petit placidam sub libertaie quietem — She seeks with the 
sword serene repose under liberty. Hence it is more than 
probable that England's now peaceful and lovely fields will 
again reecho with the ragings of civil war. Almost every 
rood of her soil has been made fat with fraternal blood ; and 
the warfare is not yet accomplished. It is but just begun. 
Her masses with but little culture, comfort, civil rights, or 
social equality. A few persons Cover all her lands with 



312 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

their seal, while, as Tennyson declares, and declares too 
truly, — 

" Her poor are huddled and hustled together, each sex like swine ; " 

the right of primogeniture separating between children, and 
impoverishing all but one, that he may be unnaturally hon- 
ored ; a ruling class, based on birth, not worth ; a church 
claiming exclusive privilege, protection, and power ; a chief 
ruler born to his seat, and, as history has proved, almost as 
frequently a curse as a blessing to his subjects, — these rad- 
ical and profound evils, as they appear to Americans, as they 
are appearing to all men, must be abolished. Before their 
abolition, they must be boldly assailed. Said I not truly the 
warfare has hardly begun ? It will begin. The August 
day of wealth and quiet which she is now enjoying is no 
greater than that which America enjoyed two years ago. 
We had to arise and attack a gigantic foe or surrender our 
liberties. So must Britain arise. Somebody must sound the 
democratic trumpet here, and call the people to contend for 
their rights, peacefully, sternly, unto the triumphant end. 
He who calls for this glorious warfare may find that the 
traitor's gate of the Tower can still be opened, and that the 
headman's ax is yet sharp, if rusty. 

More than one has had to lay down his life in America 
before the conflict came to its armed and final issue. Love- 
joy died at the hands of a mob, defending liberty of speech. 
Torrey expired in a Maryland dungeon for seeking to deliver 
the captives. Others have been offered on the altar of this 
faith, until the traitor's gibbet was honored with the heroic 
martyrdom of. John Brown and his devoted band. For some 
yet unknown heroes in your land the hemlock and the laurel 
are perhaps now growing. I hope and pray that this work 
may require no such sacrifices, but that, by peaceful agita- 
tion, this divine purpose may be accomplished. But it must 
be begun, and on their heads be the guilt who seek thus to 



ENGLAND AND AMEEICA. 313 

suppress it. When accomplished, — whether, as we hope, 
peacefully, or, as may possibly happen, by such a conflict as 
America is now passing through, — there will be a new 
England, far lovelier than the past or present ; an England 
not only of charming ruins, and fields, and roads, and sheep, 
and kine, of castles and villas, where a sumptuous nobility 
or the comfortable middle class, dwell in delightful seclusion, 
but an England where the multitudinous masses are upraised 
in intelligence, comfort, arid dignity ; where all have equal 
rights, and legislators and governors, elected by the people, 
feel that they are one with the people. The kindness which 
now beautifies many in these high stations will not then be, 
as now, one of condescension, but of the promptings of 
equality and fraternity. Then, and not till then, shall the 
saying of the Great Alfred (one of our founders as well as 
of yours, for both peoples were in his loins) be fulfilled, that 
" England wishes every man to be as free as his own 
thoughts." 

It is no child's play that is laid upon the Englishmen of 
to-day. It is no chaffering between two pampered and pur- 
poseless parties, whose quarrels are almost as powerless for 
the good of the State as were those of the Court of Louis XV. 
They may be swept away, as those were, by the strong wind 
of a political revolution. May the men of Britain see and 
seize this arduous, glorious calling. May they gird their 
loins to the great work. Then will disinthralled America 
forget the conduct of the present ruling caste, and with the 
Commonwealth of England hold firm and eternal concord ; 
for they will be one in feeling, work, and victory. 

But I may be intruding upon your courtesy by such ut- 
terances, though they have legitimate connection with the 
whole argument ; for, to the American mind, democracy is in 
debate on her fields, and anti-democracy alone is the baleful 
animus of English silence and practical complicity. But 
these words, to be effectual in England, must be proclaimed 



314 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

by Englishmen. My excuse for the liberty I have indulged, 
if any is needed, is that, though writing in France, I am 
writing to England. Here a government professedly based 
on seven and a half millions of free votes dare not allow a 
single obscure word in an obscure journal to question its 
pretended popular sovereignty ; but Britain has long re- 
joiced in perfect liberty of speech and press. We trust it is 
no vain boasting. It must be perfect, or it is no liberty ; if 
it cannot discuss the system as well as the policy of its 
government — the constitution as well as the administra- 
tion — it is as much paralyzed as though stricken with utter 
dumbness. I remember, too, that one of your own poets 

has said, — 

" Let us ponder boldly ; 'tis a base 
Abandonment of reason to resign 
Our right of thought." 

But freedom of thought is not freedom unless that of speech 
accompany it. 

As the utmost license of honest utterance exists in respect 
to every other subject, so it must in respect to this also. 
Our Creator subjects His nature,' government, and move- 
ments to the scrutiny of all His intelligent creatures. If He 
thus casts His works and "Word, His Gospel, and Himself in 
His Incarnation, in His Trinity, in all His nature and work- 
ings into the crucible of honest discussion, certainly this far 
lesser idea of civil government cannot claim exemption. If 
kings are kings, as they say they are, Dei gratia, then 
they must be content with the condition He has imposed on 
His own royalty. "It is enough for the servant that he be 
as his Master." But it has no exemption in reality. Their 
own government is discussed privately by Europeans, in 
every parlor, kitchen, and workshop, as much as the Ameri- 
can is in America. It must be publicly here as it is there. 
Let not the advocates of any system fear for the result. As 
was said of an infinitely greater cause, involved in an in- 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 315 

finitely more vital controversy, so may it be of these con- 
flicting ideas of government : "If they be of man, they will 
come to naught ; but if of God, we cannot overthrow them, 
lest haply we be found fighting against God." Napoleon 
said Europe in half a century would be Republican or Cos- 
sack.. The Crimean War prevented the triumph of the 
latter ; the rule of the slave power in America has thus far 
prevented the former. If that be overthrown, it is not too 
late in the remaining decade of time he suggested, to have 
his prophecy fulfilled. He saw at least that the world was 
too small for such hostile systems to long hold equal sov- 
ereignty. It is getting smaller every day. All men must 
soon decide whether they will rule themselves, or be ruled 
by a self-elected few. Four reunions of the world's indus- 
try within ten years show us how compact, how interwoven, 
is the family of man. In like manner the world's politics 
should be calmly, carefully, and courageously considered 
by the world's representatives. It will be considered, but 
whether in this or a more violent form, God knows. 

But, finally, it is perhaps only a proper expression of 
gratitude for .an American to speak thus freely to Great 
Britain of her great defect and duty. You sent one of your 
most eloquent orators to America to show us our sin, and to 
summon us to the work of its extirpation. You have faith- 
fully and constantly set before us this duty in your journals, 
in the resolutions of religious and philanthropic associations, 
and even in the documents of State. A humble son of 
America may show the gratitude which he and many of his 
people truly feel for this faithfulness on your part, by a 
reciprocal service. As Mr. Garrison said of some of his 
warm English sympathizers, "Each nation, as each individual, 
has its own cross to bear. Your duty is not ours. It is 
ours to abolish slavery. It is yours to abolish aristocracy, 
from the knight to the throne." Both will then arrive, 
though by different paths, at the same high and glorious 



316 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 

table-land of universal liberty, equality, and fraternity May 
our motto be an improvement of that of England, and in- 
stead of the selfish Norman's proud French, " G.od and my 
right," may it be the better, the best watchword, " God and 
the Eight." And may He give us grace and strength as na- 
tions, as well as individuals, to see and to do our whole duty. 
With great respect, 

I remain, truly yours, 

Gr. Haven. 

PARIS, July 4, 1862. 




THE STATE 



A CHEISTIAN BKOTH 
ERHOOD.* 




" Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the 
leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened 
bread of sincerity and truth." — 1 cor. v. 8. 

"Arise; shine." — lsa. lx. 1. 

" All nations shall call you blessed ; for ye shall be a de- 
lightsome LAND, SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS." — Mai. iii. 12. 

HE feast referred to by the apostle was the Jew- 
ish fast and feast, commemorative alike of the 
greatest gloom and gladness. It is celebrated to- 
night and to-morrow all over Christendom, by 
both Jews and Christians, — the solemn sacrifice, typical 
and memorial, of the blessed Lord. With Paul, we see the 
sacred supper, and the more sacred garden that eternally 
sanctify this day. With him we behold the consummations 
of the morrow, — from the midnight betrayal to the mid- 
night burial, — the scorn and scourging, the mob, from pub- 
lican to priest, seething with ferocious rage, the cross of 
agony, the torn and bloody hands, and feet, and head, the 
blackened heavens and rent earth ! How they overwhelm 

* A discourse delivered before the New England Conference of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, at the High Street Church, Charlestown, 
Mass., on the occasion of the annual State Fast, April 2, 1863. 

(317) 



318 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

us, as we stand on this distant point of earth and time, and 
look upon that Form, high and lifted up ! The preliminary 
services of many generations also rise before us ; even back 
to that Thursday night, when there was wrought out the 
earthly salvation of a nation, type of the earthly and eter- 
nal salvation of the world. We see the poor slaves, aroused 
by the screams of their hitherto haughty neighbors, hastily 
cooking their unraised cakes, and, in great terror, as well 
as great joy, fleeing from the house of bondage. The light 
of four thousand years shines solemnly upon us. We feel 
our unity with the emancipated founders of the memorial 
sacrifice — with Him in whom, in "the form of a slave," 
it was divinely consummated. 

But our responsibilities lie not with the past. We gather 
from it incentives to duty ; but the Duties themselves are 
here and now. The apostle introduces these words in an 
earnest expostulation with his brethren for a local, Corin- 
thian sin. So we, if we would rightly eat the unleavened 
bread and bitter herbs of a true fast, must do it by purging 
ourselves of the old leaven of malice and wickedness within 
ourselves, and by eating the unleavened bread of sincerity 
and truth, in respect to present and personal obligations. 
The cause of this gathering is not to keep the passover, not 
even to dwell on the great event, which, more than all oth- 
ers, should be held by the Church in perpetual remembrance. 
It is by invitation of this Commonwealth, through its elect 
head, to deplore our national sins, and implore national for- 
giveness and salvation. We may with especial propriety, 
therefore, consider those questions of morality and religion 
that connect themselves with our civil and social insti- 
tutions. 

In what respect must we, as citizens, must our nation, as 
a nation, purge itself of the old leaven of malice and wick- 
edness ? What are the new works, sincere and truthful, 
demanded of us by the God and Savior of nations and of 



THE MISSION OF AMEEICA. 319 

men ? May God help us to speak and hear in the enjoined 
spirit of sincerity, the bIUxqIveuz, or translucent clear- 
ness of spiritual vision, by which, and by which alone, we 
detect the perfect proportions and exquisite beauty of abso- 
lute truth. If the green scum of pride cover the soul's 
vision, if the muddy elements of prejudice float in it, 
if the violent winds of passion toss it, if, as is often the 
case, all these combine, a dead surface, muddy center, and 
vehement commotion, then we shall not discern the truth. 
We may fancy that we have found it, but it will be a luster- 
less, crystalless thing, the worthless compound of our own 
gross natures. We shall rage on those who do discover it, 
and set it before us. Not in Christ's day, alone, did swine 
trample pearls under their feet, and turn and rend those 
who set before them these gifts that were then esteemed 
more precious than diamonds. The human heart, here 
and everywhere, in you and me, tempts to this same act. 
It is a swinish heart, full of swinish conceit and appetite, 
that the grace of God alone can purge and purify, and 
uplift to the style and manners of the sky. Let us im- 
plore for ourselves the presence of His Holy Spirit, which 
alone can give us the eye serene and the transparent me- 
dium by which we may see the very thought of God in 
all its perfection of beauty. May we be lifted up by His 
side, in a revelator's vision, and behold our land and our- 
selves, as His eye now beholds them. Then shall we gather 
from the thoughts of the hour both increasing purity and 
increasing- knowledge. The truth that thus shines out to 
onr humble-lidded eye will itself dissipate any remaining 
darkness in the medium of vision. We shall see the more 
clearly from seeing it the more clearly. 

It is a favorite conceit with all famous peoples that they 
have a mission. " For some especial purpose God has 
raised them up," they say, forgetting that this purpose may 
be, in their case, as it was in Pharaoh's, to show forth His 



320 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

power and His wrath. They forget that it is the simple, 
universal, every-day mission of doing justly, loving mercy, 
and walking humbly before God, and that it is the national, 
as well as private, observance of those probationary tests 
that shall fit us for, and insure us admission to, the citizen- 
ship of the heavenly nation. But worldly people dream 
that they have some great earthly thing to do, and cry out 
with Pharisaic agony of conceit, How are we straitened till 
it be accomplished ! So has it always been. Egypt, un- 
doubtedly, fancied that she had a mission, and, looking on 
her pyramids, obelisks, sphinxes, and temples, dreamed that 
the problems of the universe were to find solution only in 
her. So, evidently, felt Nebuchadnezzar and the powers of 
Nineveh and Babylon. So did Athens, and Turkey, and 
Venice, and mediaeval Italy. So did Spain and France. 
So, to-day, do England and America. 

It will be noticed that only as a people rise to wealth 
and power do they begin to assume these airs, and when 
that wealth and power leave them, much, if not all, the 
sense of their peculiar mission departs also. Another fact 
is also noticeable. The institutions under which they have 
happened to flourish receive all the glory of their success 
and the ardor of their propagation. Athens thought her 
style of a slave democracy the world's panacea. Sparta 
was certain that her fashion of a slave oligarchy was the 
only remedy. Rome would Romanize everything. So is it 
now. The British fancy that their Constitution is the sole 
cause of their prosperity, and that, could it be applied to 
all the weak bodies politic of Europe, it would effect an 
instant cure ; while the truth is, her Constitution, for five 
hundred years, never made her great. Protestantism and 
the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope are the causes 
of her wealth, and her wealth the cause of her arrogant 
self-esteem. 

We are treading in the same path. Is it a divine one, or 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 321 

is it but the fantas} r of a heated vanity ? One is constrained 
to feel that much of it is the laudation with which success 
crowns her votaries. She delights to wreathe the laurels 
of virtue with those of victory. Yet there .is a basis for 
this universal sentiment. It is this. All nations, at their 
beginning, or at the hour of their especial development, 
measurably recognize the equal rights of all. The Arab 
and Turk, flying with the crescent, symbol of their bloody 
cimeter, across three continents, offered equal privileges to 
every soldier. The meanest serf was one with the haughti- 
est bashaw before God and His prophet. A like sense of 
equality won Marathon and Salamis, and founded the Gre- 
cian power. Rome's greatest victories were when she was 
a republic. Gibbon begins her decline with her Caesars. 
Venice, Holland, and republican France, all felt this inspi- 
ration sweeping them on to power. Yet these have per- 
ished. They are broken in pieces as a potter's vessel. They 
departed from God and God from them. It would seem as 
if nations would be taught by their fate. But nations, like 
individuals, are but slightly impressed with another's expe- 
rience. England is traveling the same path. In the day 
of her wealth and power she is doing precisely what Venice, 
Greece, and Rome did in theirs. She tramples on the rights 
of her despised people, from whom alone is her real life. 
Unless she is converted, she will follow her proud predeces- 
sors to their eternal grave. 

What is our mission ? It is of precisely the same char- 
acter as theirs, and as all men's — to fear God and keep His 
commandments. Being the latest birth of time, the princi- 
ples on which and of which we must live are so clearly rec- 
ognized, that they have found expression in our organic law. 
They are twofold. 

First. Universal toleration of religion, with the acknowl- 
edged supremacy of Christianity. 

Second. The universal equality and fraternity of man. 
21 



322 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

I. We may properly consider, as preliminary to the first 
topic, the marked difference between this idea and those 
which have been followed by previous nations. Kefigion 
has always been recognized as the supreme idea of the 
State. In Israel orthodoxy and obedience were identical ; 
so were heterodoxy and treason. When Christianity became 
potent in the Romam empire, it ascended the throne as the 
supreme object of reverence. It supplanted heathenism, 
which, for four centuries, had attacked it with instinctive 
and increasing ferocity. Not without earthly wisdom did 
Herod search for his rival to the throne of David among the 
babes of Bethlehem. Not without the bloody instincts of 
self-preservation did he slay the whole, that he might the 
One. He knew that the scepter of earthly sovereignty was 
grasped by the appointed Heir of all things. He saw that 
his central and sacred throne would be the first that He 
would ascend. Every pagan emperor acted with like worldly 
wisdom. The refusal to worship their dead predecessor was 
a refusal to acknowledge their own legitimacy. If unhin- 
dered by their clemency or carelessness, it must result in 
the overthrow of their dynasty. Could Napoleon allow 
citizens of France, or Victoria those of England, to openly 
acknowledge a Bourbon or a Stuart as their sovereign ? 
Then they could a president, and where are they and theirs ? 
The same instinct of self-preservation worked alike in rulers 
as sanguinary as Nero, as gross as Caligula, as states- 
man-like as Trajan, as clement as Marcus Aurelius, as de- 
votional as Pius Antoninus. They all, with one accord, sought 
to uproot the pestiferous treason — treason against the gods, 
and, therefore, against the State. In the triumph of Chris- 
tianity the same law obtained. It was Christianity, not 
Constantine, that overthrew Paganism at the Pons Milvius. 
Under its inspiration, he slays the gods in the person of his 
rival Maxentius. Not without significance, too, may we 
not say, not without Providence, did this heathen bring into 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 323 

the conflict the holy vessels of the Hebrew service — three 
hundred years before, with their nation, brought captive to 
Rome. As Jew and pagan united in killing Christ because 
He assumed to be their king, so they again, and for the 
last time, appear. together to prevent His elevation to the 
throne of earthly dominion. The apostate Church and apos- 
tate world are confederate against the Lord's Anointed. It 
is in vain. The ark that once embodied the rejecting and 
rejected Church, and the golden candlestick that suggested 
its vanished light, follow the idolatrous Caesar, the incar- 
nation of pagan supremacy, to the bed of the Tiber, while 
the Cross, waving in the skies, leads the triumphing eagles 
of the Christian Caasar to the throne of the world. 

From that hour till the organization of the American gov- 
ernment, Christianity had allowed no real toleration to hos- 
tile or indifferent faiths. However Christless it was, it yet 
assumed an undivided sovereignty. Whatever civil wars it 
had in itself, those wars never questioned its supremacy in 
the affairs of state. Latin Occidentalism fought for centu- 
ries with Greek Orientalism for the control of the empire. 
Protestantism, in many preliminary skirmishes, and for gen- 
erations after the Reformation dawned, contended mightily 
with Romanism ; but none of these forms of faith ever 
dreamed that they were contending for toleration. They 
were striving for the mastery. Their success involved the 
utter overthrow of their rival. Such were the wars of Ger- 
many and England for two hundred years. As soon as any 
especial type of faith prevailed, it demanded the complete 
obedience of its foes. Presbyterianism was as zealous for 
the rack and thumb-screw against Episcopacy, as both against 
Papacy. Janet's stool, hurled against the robed and prayer- 
reading Churchman in John Knox's kirk, was but a symbol 
of the national' feeling. Cromwell was as severe against 
the liturgists as Charles II. against non-conformity. The 
reason why the true faith outlived these persecutions was, 



324 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

because it was the true faith. Had it been false utterly, 
as were the pagan systems, it would have died and 
made no sign. Constantine was as rigid in requiring sub- 
jection to his religion as Diocletian, just before him, had 
been. But Diocletian struggled to slay the divine truth, 
and hence rightfully goes down to history as a persecutor ; 
Constantine, to extirpate a false, though famous, faith, and 
its advocates either yielded an outward conformity, because 
it gave them no inward support in their extremity, or else, 
resisting and perishing, have been accounted, by their 
victors and their posterity to this day, as worthy of death 
and infamy. 

It is well to notice here the charge that is often laid against 
our Puritan, not Pilgrim, fathers, for the Plymouth Pilgrims 
learned toleration in their exile, and were the first to prac- 
tice it in the world. But the Puritans of Massachusetts 
Bay had suffered less and learned less. They simply con- 
formed to this, till then, universal principle. They revolted 
from the ritualistic forms of worship, and for almost a hun- 
dred years had striven with it for the mastery of England. 
They had been defeated. They must conform or fly. Had 
they succeeded, their rivals must have done likewise. They 
did so obey or fly in the reign of Cromwell. Defeated they 
retreated to America. No wiser than their generation, than 
all previous generations, they made their creed the supreme 
law of the land. Any shade of difference was, so far forth, 
treason — any avowal thereof must be punished as rig-idly 
as theft or murder ; more rigidly, for these concerned but 
the estates or bodily lives of their people — that, if allowed, 
imperiled their eternal salvation. The idea of toleration 
found occasional expression, but it was rather the dream of 
a fanciful thinker than the resolute opinion of a sturdy be- 
liever. Lord Bacon held to it, but Lord Bacon was hardly 
thought to be a wise master-builder in ecclesiastical matters. 

The first man who introduced it formally into the consti- 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 325 

tution of human government, grew to the height of his 
great argument in the prolific soil of Puritan politics. Roger 
Williams " saw the light and hailed it in his joy," when, 
seeking deliverance from the trammels of a human creed, he 
found himself restrained by the bolts and bars of human 
laws. It was the conflict of conscience with conscience 
that struck out the spark of the inviolable sanctity of con- 
science, which has become the peculiar light and glory of 
America. It is not unlikely that had he been allowed a 
measure of liberty in prophesying, he would have been con- 
tented with his chains. He certainly shows the inconsis- 
tency which every strong nature somewhere reveals, in that, 
while contending for the utmost liberty of conscience in the 
State, he should exclude from the Church all who refused 
compliance with a mere form. Had his colony been as great 
and prosperous as its neighbors, it might have returned to 
their system. To expel unimmersed Christians from the 
Church is as much greater violation of human rights than 
to expel non-conformists and non-professors from the State, 
as the Church itself is greater than the State. 

Less catholic was the Catholicism of Maryland. Like 
that of Rhode Island, it was constrained by events. Unlike 
that, it was not developed from principle. James would 
establish a colony. He wished that it should be Papal. His 
power was not equal to his desires. A Prostestant Parlia- 
ment was hostile. He secured his ends only by making 
league with the most ultra of his opponents ; and on the 
basis of perfect toleration the most extreme of Papists and 
Protestants outwardly, not inwardly, united. Maryland 
was the fruit of the strange marriage ; — an unnatural 
child, she reveals the unmingling contraries of her origin, 
even to this day. 

The American idea, therefore, of the equality of all 
Churches and Christians before the law is of the latest origin. 
It is also to-day as purely an American institution as the 



326 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

civil equality of the people. There are but few religious 
bodies and no Christian governments elsewhere that yet 
desire such a boon. They are as much afraid of spiritual, 
as of social and civil democracy. 

The Protestants of France accept subsidies from the State, 
and submit to the restraints with which it pays for its aid. 
M. Monod, one of the most able of the Evangelical preach- 
ers of Paris, told me, with especial and unconscious pride, 
of their success in building up congregations to the standard 
required before they could draw on the government for the 
support of a pastor, and of the various increments accord- 
ing to which that aid was graded. He did not seem to feel 
the ignominy of receiving his bread from such a hand as 
Louis Napoleon's — a professed Papist — a real Infidel. He 
did not feel the further degradation, as it would seem to an 
Englishman even, for they have grown to that stature, of 
being forbidden by his patron from saying anything contro- 
versially against the Papists. Napoleon keeps up the show 
of impartiality by requiring like pledges of the Papal priests. 
It is one of the shrewd dodges of that arch hypocrite, by 
which he apparently serves the cause of liberty, and realty 
that of slavery. With Paris, thoroughly, openly, universally 
Catholic, there is as little need of the priests declaiming 
against Protestantism as in the days of Louis XIV. ; while 
the possibility of Protestants converting those whose errors 
of doctrine they are not allowed to oppose, would be as 
hopeful as the like silence imposed by the Sanhedrim on 
Peter and John, had they submitted to that decree of the 
State, would have been in the conversion of the Jews. To 
carry out his crafty trickery, he puts a policeman in every 
church to see that it does not violate this law, and all 
— whether native or foreign, Wesleyan or American — are 
thus preserved from the errors of free speech, and bold de- 
nunciation of dominant apostasy. What Monod and his 
friends ought to do, would be to cast the gold of the empe- 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 327 

ror at his feet, saying, "Thy money perish with thee," 
and, departing from his presence, proclaim the whole truth 
as it is in Jesus. He would undoubtedly make a vigorous 
attempt to suppress their liberty, but they would grow with 
persecutions. The days of St. Bartholomew are passed. 
He would be constrained to concede what they piously and 
persistently demanded. But they content themselves with 
faithfully laboring in the imperial fetters, hoping for some 
movement of Providence that shall set them at liberty. 

Like, though less servile, are the dissenters of Britain. 
The universal tax to support the Establishment is quietly 
submitted to by millions of anti-Churchmen. If there were 
but a uniform refusal to pay it, it would soon be swept 
away. A single item illustrates the power of this tithe. 
In the Epworth Church, where Samuel Wesley was rector, 
a son of a Lord, Kev. and Hon. Charles Dundas, is the pres- 
ent incumbent. His congregation, on a beautiful June Sab- 
bath, was not over fifty ; less than twenty staid to the 
sacrament. In the village around the church are, at least, 
three churches or chapels of "Wesleyans, Independents, and 
others. Yet the income of the rector is over eleven hun- 
dred pounds, or nearly six thousand dollars. Four fifths of 
this is drawn from the poor neighbors who never attend his 
preaching. This is a poor country parish, and bears no 
comparison to the enormous wealth of some of the clerical 
estates. Walking on the uplands near Shakspeare's cliff 
at Dover, I asked a peasant who owned the land about me. 
" The Archbishop of Canterbury," he replied. Yet this 
was twenty-five miles from Canterbury, and a hundred from 
his real residence, which is in London. 

Such a system, of course, prevents real toleration. Lib- 
erty of conscience is never perfect where one is compelled 
to pay for the support of a religion he does not approve. 
Nor is the liberty of the National Church itself more than a 
name, when politicians, like Palmerston, appoint their bish- 



328 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

ops and station their preachers. But the non-conforming 
mind, as a whole, is not ripe for a perfect independency. 
The Free Church of Scotland, though it spurns the aid of a 
patronizing State, would willingly receive it, if the State 
would not interfere with its operations. Were that Church 
strong enough to bring Scotland over to its view, it would 
dictate terms, under threat of dissolving the British Union ; 
would become the State Church, and take the moneys of 
the government for the support of its preachers, while it 
maintained its superiority over the State, and did not — as 
the National Kirk meekly does — place the sovereign or 
her lordly representative in a royal gallery, far above the 
moderator, the real head of the Church. 

Like ideas and. usages prevail in Protestant Germany. 
In fine, everywhere but here, is there more or less of a sub- 
jection of the Church to the State, whereby the Church re- 
ceives its stipends and surrenders her sovereignty. The Ro- 
man States are the only exception. There the Church is the 
State, as it was in the original Jewish nation. When one 
sees in Rome officials, judge, policeman, custom-house offi- 
cer, all, receiving their salaries from a clergyman, whose 
council of state are also clergymen, he has a lively concep- 
tion of Palestine under Samuel, and the high priests of a 
later period. Even their kings were but the collectors and 
disbursers of the Church tariffs — never the supreme head 
of the Church, as in England. 

The Church and the State have thus experienced all the 
evils of alternate authority. Now the Church rules the 
State, and now the State the Church. Here, for the first 
time, they agree to dissolve partnership. They who have 
been united for good or evil, for better or worse, in life and 
in death, in all previous ages and races, who have never 
conceived a dissolution possible, have agreed to make the 
experiment. The collisions of conscience have compelled 
this — not the advance of political science. Had the Con- 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 329 

science been a unit, the State would have remained its ser- 
vant. Dissensions in the Church made statesmen of indif- 
ferent conscience — as Jefferson and Franklin — see that the 
independence of each high contracting party was better for 
both.* Others, more conscientious, adopted their views, 
and thus was launched the great national idea. It is new 
in history, and new in two important respects to ourselves. 

1. It has not been universal with us till the previous gen- 
eration. But two or three colonies were without an estab- 
lished Church at the beginning of our national existence. 

2. A more important consideration is, that this toleration 
had never been extended among the most extremely liberal 
commonwealths, so as to place all faiths and non-faiths on 
the same basis as Christianity. The colony of Roger Wil- 
liams was a Baptist colony, with all its toleration : so was 
Penn's a Quaker. Both were Christian. The deposition of 
Christianity from the supreme seat is an act almost of our 
day. It is not yet everywhere formally accomplished, 
though the force of the current sweeps thither. 

This idea seems to us eminently practical. It is not so 
necessarily. It has its most grave and perplexing prob- 
lems. Like all things human, it is defective and mortal. 
It will have its day, and cease to be. But we live in the 
hour of its supremacy. We are required to make full proof 
of the ministry we have received of the Lord Jesus during 
its dominion. We ought carefully to consider, then, what 
are the dangerous tendencies of such a system, and what 
are the duties of the ministry in view of these tendencies. 

The greatest peril of such a disunion is, that the State 
ceases to recognize Christ as its Head. We may be so 
tolerant as to be intolerant of Christianity. We may al- 
low such liberty as to reject the authority of the Author 
of all our liberties. We are attempting to build up and 
make mighty in the earth a nation that is Christian in reality, 

* Mill on Liberty, p. 20. 



330 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

and not in name. How difficult, if not impossible, such a 
work is, can only be seen by comparing it with every other 
great nation in history. The four kingdoms that Daniel de- 
scribed to Nebuchadnezzar were pagan powers, crushed by 
the stone cut from the eternal mountain. The governments 
since the days of Constantine have been imperfect portions 
of that kingdom that is to fill the whole earth. This divine 
kingdom is going on to its completion, and every power to 
whom God giveth prominence must consider itself as one 
of its component parts. 

The successive rise of these Christian empires has been 
because of their partial allegiance to Christ — their succes- 
sive fall, because of their subsequent revolt from Him. The 
present hour beholds four great powers influencing the 
world — England, France, Eussia, and the United States. 
Each of the others is the representative of a grand division 
of the Christian Church. We profess not to represent the 
Christian Church in any of these great divisions. Further 
than this, we profess not to represent Christianity itself. 
The first position is right. The second is wrong. It is 
proper for us to say we are not a Papist or Protestant nation. 
It is proper to amply protect Jew, Mussulman, Pagan, and 
Infidel, in his worship or non-worship ; but it is not proper 
to refuse to recognize Christ as our national Head. It is 
not right to carefully abstain, in every presidential message 
and proclamation of fasting or thanksgiving, from mention- 
ing the name of the Savior of the world. Such liberality is 
licentiousness. Such fastidiousness is fatal. We aspire to 
the leadership of the world. But it must be only as the 
lieutenant of Christ. If we hope to thrust ourselves into 
the front rank of the race, at this period of the world's his- 
tory, and so near the millennial reign, without any especial 
cognizance of Him by whom are all things, and for whom 
are all things, we shall find that we have made a dreadful 
mistake. We shall surely and most suddenly be ground to 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. ' 331 

powder under the steady and rapid advance of that divine 
Stone. We shall be as though we had never been. God 
would make small account of us, no matter how large we 
made of ourselves, did we thus trifle with His decree, made 
before the world was, and confirmed often since man began 
his career : " Ask of Me and I will give Thee the heathen 
for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for Thy possession." Christ has asked, has earned the gift. 
It shall be given. Who art thou, Goliath of America, that 
dares to talk about establishing a kingdom with no Christ 
in it, or with Christ put on a level with Mahomet or Buddh, 
Paine or Parker ? " The nation and kingdom that will not 
serve Thee shall perish. Yea, those nations shall be utterly 
wasted." It is as true now as in the days of pagan Nero ; 
as true here as in Mohammedan Turkey. You may say we 
are Christian. So we might be if the majority governed ; 
but this is a case where the minority govern ; and no Pres- 
ident dares acknowledge Christianity to be the religion of 
this nation. It may offend some unchristian conscience. 
The call to prayer and fasting that appears in to-day's 
papers confirms the statement. There is no Christ in it. 
It is contrary to our cardinal principle. If this is to be 
the doctrine of America, she will never live out half her 
days. The attempt now being made to introduce into the 
Constitution the confession of national faith in God and 
Christ ought to be pressed forward. The blessing of God 
will attend its success. 

Already two great sores have broken out upon us in con- 
sequence of this latitudinarianism — one, the irreligious 
character of many of our public men, and of the masses of 
the people ; the other, false notions as to the minister's 
relation to politics or the affairs of State. 

1. It is a rare thing to see a man in the presidential seat 
who is a professed Christian. I am not aware that such 
an one has ever been elected to that chair. It is prob- 



332 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

able that not one of them was a member of an Evangelical 
Church. This evil is not cured yet. We have had moral 
men, and those who were far otherwise. But a man that 
was willing to avow himself a Christian, that was con- 
nected with a Christian church, and received its sacraments, 
is yet a most rare novelty there. The same is true of the 
majority of our high officials. Whatever the party in power, 
that fact remains unaltered. The representatives of the 
cause of liberty are as unwilling to personally profess Christ 
as are those of the cause of slavery. This is strikingly 
contrary to the managers of nations abroad. Whatever 
defects they have, — and they are many, — however bitterly 
they oppose the rights of the people, they recognize the 
rights of Christ. They are professors of faith in Him, and 
trust to Him alone for salvation. The prominence that they 
thus give to personal Christian faith is not without marked 
benefits. It recognizes the necessity of that faith. It re- 
bukes infidelity. It popularizes religion. We may com- 
plain of the feeble fruit of such a divine seed, as we see 
their adhesion to hoary errors and violent perverting of jus- 
tice ; but we forget that we, as a people, have been, and, 
in a degree, are even now, guilty of like devotion to hideous 
sins. Their corrupt sentiments and unchristian conduct are 
not Christianity, and multitudes who are affected by the 
fashion of the great men more than by their sins, may thus 
be led to a simple and saving knowledge of Christ. Cer- 
tainly the prevalence of a lack of Christian faith, on the 
part of our representative men, reproduces this irreligion in 
a fearfully increasing ratio as we move through the masses 
of society. The great majority of Americans have no re- 
ligion. They are worse than the worst heathen, for these 
do revere and worship something higher than themselves. 
Even in New England, the majority, probably, of most 
towns have no personal faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. 
So fearfully does this irreligion in high places reveal itself 
in the low. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 333 

In Europe the poorest classes are very generally religious. 
However low the tone of their piety, — however ignorant 
all, and immoral many may be, — there is in the masses a 
knowledge of Jesus as the only Redeemer, the conscious- 
ness of the need of His blood for their salvation, a will- 
ingness to confess such a need, and, perhaps, according to 
the light they have, through the half-teachings of their 
spiritual guides, as strict a conformity to the demands of 
their faith as with us. All this is directly contrary to- our 
experience. How few attend our Sunday services ! When 
there, how impious their bearing — sitting and staring 
through the prayers as coolly as at a play — coming to 
Sunday evening meetings in large numbers, but with no 
thought of worship — with no idea that they are expected 
to feel a sentiment of godly fear, or sorrow, or faith, — 
while myriads never darken the doors of a church, and 
spend the Sabbath as thoughtlessly as they do a holiday ! 
These are solemn, they are dreadful truths. 

They may well make us pause in our rejoicings over the 
perfect equality of all religions. They show us that we 
may have gone further than the scriptural warrant, than the 
liberty that is in Christ Jesus. I do not read that the 
heavenly worlds put atheism, diabolism, and every other foe 
of God, on a footing with God Himself. If they did, hell 
and paradise would be identical, and Satan be as much pro- 
tected in his idea of worship as Michael in his. Nay, more. 
The synagogue of Satan would be on a perfect level with 
that of Christ, and the impartial and tolerant Governor of 
the universe would represent the two parties by being Him- 
self without any religion whatever, as are our public schools 
— the neutral point where the two contraries become a 
zero. This idea of God, which Emerson sets forth in some 
of his most nervous infidelity, is but the fitting expression of 
our popular religious principle : — 



334 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

" There unlike things are like; 
There good and ill, 
And joy and moan, 
Melt into one." 

2. But this is not its only defect. It is not negative ex- 
clusively. No error is. It is eminently active, and one of 
its activities is, that religion and the State being divorced, 
ministers, the teachers and representatives of true religion, 
must not meddle with politics or the affairs of State. "They 
don't belong to your parish/' say the self-elected leaders 
of civil affairs. " Let us alone. What have we to do with 
thee, thou minister of Jesus, the Son of David ? Hast thou 
come to torment us before our time ? " And they do not 
cry out thus, cowering and trembling as did most of their 
kindred of old, but with the effrontery of the same kindred 
when they baffled the ministers of Christ at the foot of the 
mount of transfiguration. 

" You attend to the Church, and we will attend to the 
State." It is much as if one should shut you up in a spa- 
cious house, which he had no desire to enter, and say, 
" Stay thou there while I roam at will through all the adja- 
cent fields, and streets, and homes. I have all out of doors 
to myself, and all in doors but that one habitation." In 
due time such a haughty doorkeeper to the house of God 
goes a little further. He not only forbids your leaving your 
palace, which he thus makes a prison, but he forbids your 
speaking, when there, on matters and things outside of your 
walls. If he deigns t.O visit you, you must not dare to give 
him advice as to how he shall have his conversation in this 
world. You must not presume to discourse upon the prin- 
ciples involved in his profession and career. You are de- 
basing' your profession, if you do. You are intruding on 
domains forbidden to clerical feet. You are dragging your 
robes in the mire of political strife. " Preach Christ," he 
impudently says. Poor creature ! A full Christianity is 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 335 

the last thing he wishes to have preached. A Christ who 
is Lord of lords — to whom belong the kingdoms of this 
world — who demands that they and all their subjects con- 
form in all things to the kingdom of heaven — He is what 
such transgressors especially dislike and dread. 

Even church members, — and I am surprised and grieved 
to say it, but it is true — even the very ministers of Christ 
themselves, have measurably yielded to this pressure of 
antichrist. And in our land, alone of all lands since Adam, 
has the doctrine been avowed by the Church and its minister, 
that they have nothing to do with the movements of the 
State. Far from it. They have everything to do with it. 
They always have had, they always must. 

What does God keep mankind on the earth for ? Only 
that He may build them into a holy temple in the Lord. 
But is one part of the temple open to the feet of His ser- 
vants, and not another ? Laymen could not enter the holy 
of holies ; but priests could go everywhere, from the court 
of the Gentiles to the altar and ark. So is this great tem- 
ple of humanity open to the inspection, under the surveil- 
lance, of the ministry and the Church. 

Thus has it always been. More than once did the He- 
brew kings seek to break away from the intermeddling 
clergy; but God smote the politician, not the prophet. "Art 
thou he that troubleth Israel?' 7 cries the secessionist Ahaz 
to the political preacher Elijah. Thus his traitorous de- 
scendants in America yet confront the descendants of that 
prophet. Saul meddled with Samuel's duties, and God took 
his kingdom from him. But Samuel never was censured 
for his frequent intermeddling with the affairs of Saul. David 
had to submit to the authority of more than one priest. No 
priest was ever compelled to silence before him. Isaiah, 
Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, all the preachers of right- 
eousness, dwelt on social and civil sins. They dwelt on 
hardly anything else. So the beginner of the new dispen- 



336 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

sation laid down his head because of a bit of political inter- 
meddling with the affairs of the government, and Christ was 
bolder than all His followers in denouncing the conduct of 
the real rulers of the people. 

The whole history of the Church since has been a history 
of its conflict with the world and the rulers of the world. 
The first Christians were executed for treason. The officers 
of the empire required them to take the prescribed oath of 
allegiance — the recognition of the divinity of the emperor. 
They refused, and were cast to the lions. It was as legiti- 
mate treason as that of John Brown's, and their death was 
for the same folly. 

It has continued thus ever since. The wars of Charles 
Martel and Charlemagne against the Mohammedan and 
heathen irruptors from Northern and Southern Asia, were 
inspired by the clergy ; and the great Charles was crowned 
by the Pope solely because of his zeal for the Church. They 
show you the field where Zwingle fell, in a religious civil 
war in Switzerland, at the head of the Protestant cantons — 
struck through with a lance because he would not pray to 
the Virgin. 

Cromwell's rebellion was inaugurated and sustained by 
the clergy in the interests of the Church. James' conflict 
was solely on matters of religion, and the famous trial of the 
Seven Bishops, for meddling with the decrees of the State, 
was the real cause of his expulsion. The prisoner of Chillon, 
made memorable in Byron's verse, but more memorable by 
his six years' confinement to a subterranean pillar by a chain 
not ten feet in length, was a minister who, from his pulpit, 
dared to defy the government of the Duke of Savoy. And 
God, to release him, stirred up a civil war in all that region, 
and brought the men of Geneva and Berne to reduce that 
fortress. The conversion of Geneva, which was Eoman 
Catholic when he was cast into that dungeon, to the re- 
formed faith, of which it has been for three hundred years so 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 337 

eminent a defender, was due to the faithful political preach- 
ing of Bonivard, the prior of St. Victor.* 

The necessity of defending such a thesis as this shows 
the peril of the nation. As a law against an especial of- 
fense proves the prevalence of that crime, so the many 
words that have had to be spoken in America by clergymen 
within the last few years in defense of the right to speak, 
show how far we have departed from the custom of the world 
elsewhere, and of America herself, till this generation. 

England, who keeps nearly a score of prelates in her 
highest house, whose first nobleman is a minister, the suc- 
cessor of Augustine, never dreams that the clergy degrade 
themselves by mingling in the civil strifes of the day. The 
religious journals discuss political questions as freely as 
religious, and the opening editorial of the London Watch- 
man, the Wesleyan organ, is almost always a political article. 
So was it here. What is this anniversary, of more than 
two hundred years' standing, but a recognition by the State 
of the duty of the minister to enlighten the community on 
national sins and duties ? What is thanksgiving but a like 
recognition by the State of its obligations to the God and 
Savior of nations and men ? 

Let me not be understood as undervaluing the central 
duty of the Church and ministry, when I declare that our 
chief peril, as a nation, is in refusing to avow ourselves 
Christian, and in excluding the appointed embassadors for 
Christ from the questions that agitate society. Their chief 
mission is to preach the Gospel ; but the Gospel is not con- 

* " The range of the history of the Church is as wide as the range of 
the world which it was designed to permeate. The Christian Church is 
but another name for Christendom, and Christendom merely another 
name for the most civilized, the most powerful, the most important na- 
tions of the modern habitable world." — Stanley's Lecture on the Province 
of Ecclesiastical History, in the introduction to his History of the Eastern 
Church, p. 33, et seq. See other admirable remarks on the Identity 
of Church and State, in loc. 
22 



338 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

fined to a repentance and faith that have no connection with 
social or civil duties. The Evangel of Christ is an all-em- 
bracing theme. It is the vital force of everything in earth 
and in heaven. What the ancients dreamed respecting the 
relation of the earth to the worlds around it is true in a 
spiritual sense. The Cross is the centre of the spiritual,, 
and therefore of the material, universe. 

If so, then must all things, human and temporal, acknowl- 
edge its supremacy. Literature, science, politics, business, 
the status of society, all charities, all reforms, — there is 
nothing that you can conceive that has not an intimate re- 
lation, friendly or hostile, to the Cross of Christ. The God- 
appointed bearers of that Cross have no right to omit the 
consideration of these topics. They are traitors to their 
Commander-in-chief if they do. Every knee and every 
thing shall bow to Christ, and it is our duty to bring all 
these matters to that divine test. It is thus alone that the 
kingdom of Christ can be universally established. It is thus 
alone that it can be preserved in any measure of purity and 
vitality. 

You can easily see what would be the result of yielding 
this point through cowardly complicity. The politician says, 
" You must not preach politics ; " and then goes on estab- 
lishing the State on injustice, and framing iniquity by a law, 
while you set before him, with great assiduity, the savorless 
salt of an exhausted and tasteless Gospel. He opens his 
thousands of grog-shops in defiance of you, as he has in Bos- 
ton for years. He expels the Bible from the public schools. 
He seeks to abolish the death penalty, giving free scope to 
murderous passion. He abolishes, as they almost did last 
week in our Legislature, the chief penalty for adultery, 
undermining the corner-stone of human society. Thus he 
cunningly thrusts Christ from His temple, and puts His 
enemy on His throne. 

The evil stops not here. It invades His inner sanctuary. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 339 

The crafty Philistines have entrapped the clergy in this 
diabolic doctrine of State rights — the parent of its better 
known, but not baser kindred. They are shorn of their 
strength. The pulpit must not preach against usury, the 
besetting sin of business communities, — that is not Christ 
Crucified. Some rich brother, who has waxed fat on these 
ill-gotten gains, will denounce you as an intermeddler, while 
his conduct uncensured, and himself undisciplined, keeps 
scores from the Church. You must not talk against the 
opera or theater, for that is a social matter, and " Christ 
Crucified" does not touch the pleasures of life. " It is not 
forbidden," they say, "in the Bible, though it was then the 
most popular amusement. " In this respect it is on the 
same level as slavery, according to its apologists. What 
an age has passed since their base pleas defiled the nation ! 

We cannot denounce the insane passion for fiction, even 
when it is running wild over the Church itself, and so in- 
fecting all the tiny vines of the nursery, that when we shall 
hereafter look that they bring forth grapes, they will bring 
forth wild grapes. Is there any connection between what 
we shall read and " Christ and Him crucified " ? Thus the 
enemy constrains us to throw down the hedge around the 
Church itself, and invite the boar out of the wood to waste 
it, and the wild beast of the field to devour it. 

Do you say, " Such possibilities are the foolish fancies of 
a mere theorist? Why not tell things as they are ? ;? In 
this I am no dreamer of dreams. The results of this divorce 
have been seen in this country in a more shameful prostitu- 
tion of the ministry and the Church than in any country in 
modern history — almost than in any country in any history. 
We need not go outside of our own history as a Church for 
the painful proof. We have seen in its brief life a large 
portion of its clergy in the presence of an enormous sin, re- 
fusing to confront it, declaring that to say aught against 
it was to preach politics, and for this cause they were not 



340 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

sent. Though they knew that the political face of the many- 
headed dog" of hell was the last and least, though they saw 
the infinite immorality it engendered, the blasphemy against 
Christ and His Church, the social, private, universal cor- 
ruption that broke out everywhere in the regions it occu- 
pied, — still they said, to preach against it is to preach 
politics, and our business is to proclaim Christ Crucified. 

So they broke away from their brethren who protested 
not against their silence, not even against their clerical 
communion with the monster. The episcopal contact was 
all they shuddered at. They felt that his anointed hands, 
fresh from the scourging of slaves, could hardly impart or- 
daining grace. His friends resented such a reflection on 
them. They revolted, and set up for themselves as a Church 
of Jesus Christ — a pretense as profane as the claim of the 
most corrupt of Popes, that he is Christ's vicegerent. 

They entered into an alliance with this crime. The sons 
of God married themselves to this daughter of Satan, 

" Seems woman to the waist, and fair, 
But endeth foul in many a scaly fold, 
Voluminous and vast — a serpent armed 
With mortal sting. About her middle round 
A cry of hell-hounds, never ceasing, bark 
"With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and ring 
A hideous peal." 

The Church and the State were made one flesh, and horrid 
flesh it was too ; and to-day the deluge of fire is pouring 
down upon the doomed region, and that haughty Methodist 
Episcopal Church South, where is it ? With the antedilu- 
vian cathedrals and congregations of Cain. They pretended 
to be opposed to meddling with political and social sins. 
They became their slave. " And God has wiped them as a 
man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down." 
So He dealt with His beloved Ephraim. So with the more 
beloved Judah. So He will deal with every Church that 
deals thus with Him. Only by repentance and a turning 1 



THE MISSION OF AMEKICA. 341 

with their whole heart to Him can this Church be saved. 
May such repentance and salvation yet be theirs. 

He appoints His ministers to watch over souls as those 
that must give account. It is His duty, therefore, to make 
every thing contribute to their salvation. Will a wicked 
system of government imperil the spiritual welfare of its 
subjects ? He must resist it unto the death. Will social 
vices tend to their corruption ? They must be attacked and 
overthrown. Will false doctrines delude souls to destruc- 
tion ? They must be rebuked. Would not a holy society, 
a correct system of government, correctly administered, a 
pure and lofty literature, — in fine, a virtuous civil and 
social organization, — tend to the salvation of more souls 
than corrupted morals, despotic government, and debasing 
literature ? Christ Crucified, preached to a community under 
the pressure of all manner of inward and outward lust, would 
be proclaimed almost as vainly as in Pandemonium itself. 
He is most successfully lifted up when all the surroundings 
approximate to the divinity of this central truth. 

Only thus does He keep the field at all. To keep the 
standard flying we must take care of the wings of the army. 
We must prevent flank movements, and all manner of subtle 
assaults. What matters it that you gather round the flag, 
if you desert the outposts. Great Britain fought for herself 
by trying with Nelson's fleet to confine Bonaparte in Egypt, 
as much as by setting a guard in the English Channel. Wel- 
lington was defending London when campaigning in the 
Peninsula. 

So is it with the Gospel of the Cross. Christ Crucified is 
the grand banner of the Church, in its conflict with the 
world. It is the only Name whereby the world can be 
saved. It must be always and everywhere proclaimed. It 
must be always and everywhere defended. But to come 
and hug that flag-staff with apparent fondness, while the 
enemy is plowing the outer lines with his diabolic artillery, 



342 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

is not affection, — it is cowardice ; and the officer who tnus 
comports himself receives contempt, not commendation, 
from his Master. Take your flag with you, and rush thither. 
Smite down the enemy in this remotest assault, and you 
preserve your army from more central peril. 

The indifference of God's ministers to this great social 
duty has undoubtedly bred infidelity. The very Cross of 
Christ, the ark of God, has it not been taken, in our pre- 
tense that we must be so busy in defending it, that we can- 
not speak on a political sin ? The politicians we patronized 
despised us. The men of conscience and moral vision, who 
were blind to the full truth of the Gospel, also despised us 
for truckling to popular and powerful sin, and both became 
skeptics as to the very truth which we j^rofessed to be so 
anxious to keep from harm. 

Bear with me, my brethren, if my words seem overmuch. 
They spring from the profoundest convictions of my moral 
being. They seem to me eminently, preeminently appro- 
priate to us, to the occasion, and to the land in which we 
are required to make full proof of our ministry. The great- 
est problem that we are working out here is not the equality 
and fraternity of all the children of man, unspeakably great 
as that is, but the power to preserve the utmost liberty of 
worship and the utmost liberty of no worship, with a pure 
society and a predominant Christianity. It is an attempt to 
trust the human race with the offers of salvation, without 
endeavoring, in the least degree, to compel their acquies- 
cence. It is the last possible combination of the divine 
and human in man's history. It is not unlike, one may 
fancy, the probation of the angels who keep, and those who 
kept not, their first estate. It is the very opposite of the 
position of the Father of the Church. Abraham served God 
with the whole world, to a man, against him. A State or a 
national Christianity could not, therefore, then be possible. 
David lived under a system in which every statute and cere- 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 343 

mony, civil and religious, was of divine appointment. Eu- 
ropean Christians have these outward constraints abounding. 
We have no constraint at all. 

Yet so much the more must the Church rule everywhere. 
It is a calcium light, shining out over the whole field. It 
is commander-in-chief, riding and ruling everywhere. It 
must bring every thought into obedience to Christ. What- 
ever subject or practice affects the morals, and so the basis 
of religion, it is not only legitimate for the ministry to bring 
to the Gospel light, that it may be seen what manner of 
spirit it is of, it is absolutely commanded them so to do. And 
he who refuses — no matter what excuse he may put forth — 
is verily guilty of treachery to the cause of his Master. He 
may not so purpose in his heart, but that is the fatal end. 

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and im- 
movable in this great duty. Let the churches rejoice to 
co-operate with their leaders in this work. Hold up aloft a 
full Gospel, that shall illumine every custom, thought, and 
feeling of the society, every path of human activity ; that 
shall make all daily pursuits, mercantile, manufacturing 
or otherwise, holy and unblamable before God ; — how far 
they are from it let usury, adulteration, fraud, all the tricks 
of trade, answer; — that shall rectify and exalt civil govern- 
ment as the confessed servant of Christ ; so that while grant- 
ing the utmost liberty of conscience, it shall be none the 
less bold to declare that it is a Christian government — a 
State of the great world-federation whereof our Lord is to 
be the unseen, yet always seen, Sovereign. 

II. The other topic connected with our theme and occa- 
sion deserves ampler attention than we are now at liberty 
to give. We have said that the mission of America seems 
to be twofold. First, to prove that the utmost liberty of 
conscience can co-exist with a ruling Christianity ; and, 
second, that the utmost liberty and equality of all men can 
co-exist with a stable and prosperous government. The last 



344 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

is as unsolved a problem as the first. It is being tested to- 
day. Only the power of true Christianity can secure its 
success. Many of you will say, " There is no question as 
to its success. Have we not welcomed all Europe to our 
shores ? Are we not proud to acknowledge Ireland and 
England, Germany and Italy, Hungary and Poland — every 
exile from a murdered or a murdering nation, as our friend 
and brother ? " What does that prove ? Do we call the 
Prince of Wales a democrat because he says, "lam willing 
to marry any one of a certain rank ? " We look on these 
peoples as first cousins. They are near of kin. Of course 
it is no disgrace for us to recognize their equality. 

But there is another people among us — another portion of 
our Father's family as much beloved of Him as any European. 
How do we look on them ? How do we feel towards them ? 
What merchant here will put behind his counter an intelli- 
gent, accomplished, virtuous, gentlemanly youth, whose 
blood is known to have come in ever so slight a degree 
from the oldest continent and the oldest child of Noah ? 

By the rights of primogeniture, Ham had precedence of 
all his brethren. He should have been the father of the 
Son of God. But sin in him, as in Cain, Esau, and Reuben, 
deprived him of his birthright. And, lo ! his youngest 
brother's sons, not those who took his place — for the chil- 
dren of Shem, the brothers and sisters of our Lord, have no 
aversion to those of Ham — not those of Japhet even, as a 
whole — but a little clique of this youngest brother's chil- 
dren put on airs of immeasurable superiority, and talk of 
colonizing their elder cousins by themselves, and of the im- 
possibility of treating them as their equals and brothers, 
their color is so very abhorrent, though many a darker 
European than multitudes of them, have, in the same eyes, 
the most aristocratic of complexions. 

But we must welcome them as brothers or die. There is 
no alternative. God, our Creator and theirs, has brought 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 345 

us to this shore, foreign to both of us, that He may here 
develop the fullness of that Gospel scheme He is seeking to 
establish in the earth. 

The division of languages and of man was because of 
sin. It was the first punishment after the flood. In carry- 
ing forward His enterprise of subduing the world to Himself, 
He found that He must first separate the human race by 
long-enduring boundaries. He must make them so substan- 
tially independent creations, that some of their half wise 
men should declare they had many original centers of dis- 
persion. They had but one, — in the plains of Shinar, at 
the tower of Babel. 

As the world is approaching its ultimate paradisiacal es- 
tate, it must approach the conditions of the primitive abode. 
There must be one language and one family. The language 
which seems to be in advance of all others as a world-sub- 
duing tongue, is the English. Though, when one has spent 
months among millions of people who have never heard of 
this tongue, he is constrained to doubt its speedy universal- 
ity, still, it occupies to-day more diffused and more numerous 
centers than any other tongue, and seems to be engirdling 
the earth. America will, undoubtedly, contribute largely 
to this end ; not a little by the enormous emigration which 
she will yet draw from every nation of Europe. 

She will also contribute, in no small degree, to the accom- 
plishment of the other equally dubious and seemingly remote 
but most certain event — the solidarity of the human race. 
As in Adam all were separated, so in Christ shall all be 
united. In that oneness there shall be neither Greek nor 
Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. This was the 
apostle's bold declaration to the proud Greeks of Colosse. 
He did not add " white or black/' because there are no 
whites, as we call them, in that dusky clime. He touched 
the marrow of their sensitive prejudice in putting Scythian 
•and barbarian on a level with themselves. His equally bold 



346 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

declaration to the most fastidious Athenians, that God made 
of one blood all the nations of men, must yet be verified in 
the earth. America seems to be the spot where this divine 
purpose is to be first accomplished. 

Other countries are in advance of us in some of the ele- 
ments of that perfect society. But in no one are all of 
them in such rapid process of solution and recrystallization 
as here. The three essentials of that state are well expressed 
in the French democrat's saying, yet burning on the tri- 
umphal arches of Louis the Great in spite of all the obscur- 
ing efforts of their present tyrant — " Liberty — Equality — 
Fraternity." The equality and fraternity of the African 
and Asiatic are perfectly carried out in Egypt. A like equal- 
ity and fraternity of the African and European exist in 
Mexico, the West Indies, and the Southern States. One 
of the first scientific scholars of the country,* long a resi- 
dent in Alabama and Georgia, informed me that seven eighths 
of the colored people of the South are partly white. 

But in neither of these eastern or western experiments 
is there a corresponding liberty, culture, and Christianity. 
These are needed to make the other three of any value. All 
these may, and if we are true to our national mission will, 
exist in this country. Here we have, as our foundation- 
stone, the European democrat's triad. We have it elevated 
and consecrated by universal education and the fullest ex- 
pression of Christianity. 

There we stop. To apply these to all our people — "aye, 
there's the rub." It is dreadful to many undeveloped natures 
that God, upon opening for us this fountain of living waters, 
should have invited our brethren of other climes to come 
and drink also. He has built an ark for humanity, and, lo ! 
as we very clean beasts are pompously marching in, these 
strange and most unclean creatures also enter. 

* Alexander Winchell, LL. D., Professor of Natural Science in Mich- 
igan University. 



THE MISSION OF AMEEICA. 347 

We wanted the gifts all to ourselves. Like Peter, amid 
the glories of the transfiguration, have we been in the 
transfiguration of His truth in our land. We have been per- 
fectly willing to abide in it ourselves, and have been utterly 
thoughtless of these our brethren : nay, not utterly thought- 
less, cruelly thoughtful in our aversion to their sharing with 
us this excellent glory. Had Peter seen a Gentile coming 
up the hill that moment, he would undoubtedly, in his hot, 
self-confident, American fashion, have insisted on Christ in- 
terrupting his conversation with the resplendent spirits while 
he expelled the loathsome intruder. " Dost thou dare/' he 
would exclaim, " to intrude upon our dear, delightful, Ju- 
dean banquet ! Don't you see that it is Moses and Elias 
that are talking with our Lord ? Only the chosen people 
can come up hither. Begone to your outer darkness ! " 

Peter afterwards had a bitter trial of what he called 
conscience and Christianity, but which was only a satanic 
prejudice, when, on that tanner's housetop he was invited 
to the unseemly feast. Go to your dinner to-day, and see 
toads, and snakes, and snails upon the table, and you would 
find it easy to comply with the request of the Governor. 
But if, in addition to our so-called natural abhorrence, we 
found in the Discipline, by special inspiration of God, 
through the lips of our founder, an express command to 
abstain from them as unclean, we should shake off the dust 
of our feet against the profane host, and betake ourselves 
to more Methodistical and more decent quarters. Yet God, 
who had interdicted them through Moses, now says to this 
zealous disciple of Moses, " What I have cleansed, that call 
thou not common," — says it to you and me to-day, no less 
than to Peter at Joppa : as hard bound in carnal prejudice 
as he, and, unlike him, without any shadow of Scripture 
authority to support our contempt. 

The vision is precisely adapted to us. We, like Peter, 
call a portion of our neighbors and kindred common and 



348 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

unclean — unlike him, in this respect, too, that he seemed 
to have divine command so to call them, for they were 
separated from him by decrees of His appointment. We 
loathe our brothers of the same Gentile family. We look 
on them as of another race. We talk about colonizing 
them, giving up to them the Gulf States, or the torrid sec- 
tions of America, — 

" Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world," — 

so that we can rid ourselves of their abhorred presence. 
We are theoretically, vociferously, valiantly in favor of 
equal rights. We pour out our money and our lives for 
the great cause. We fill the heavens with our jubilant re- 
verberations on the national birthday. But when it comes 
to the little practical matter of letting our darkly-hued 
neighbor sit at our table, work at our bench, tend behind 
our counter, enter into business partnerships with us, be 
our teacher, doctor, or stationed preacher, ah, how the 
Petrine nature swells indignantly within us, and we exclaim, 
" Not so, Lord. 77 Yea, we are ready to cry in the ears of 
God, my brother, though we fancy it is only in those of 
man, "Away with the fellow that talks such abominations 
from the earth. It is not worthy that he should live." 

Yet hither is God's providence drawing us. A profane 
Bostonian lately said, " I never did, and do not now, care 
anything for the negro. But I have about concluded that 
God does." The tide sweeps with increasing force and 
volume against these deep and ancient prejudices. They 
will be overwhelmed. And when buried, we shall be borne 
forward by the rolling waves of superior truth to the head- 
lands of superior vision. Did not that faithful Jew feel a 
strange enlargement of soul when he saw the centurion and 
his house receiving the word of the Lord ? When he touched 
his holy Jewish hands, wet with the sacred water of bap- 
tism, on that till then accursed brow, the preacher received 



'THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 349 

a greater baptism of the Holy Ghost than the candidate. 
There fell from his eyes as if it had been scales. He saw 
the Gospel limited to no inconsiderable race and spot, but, 
like the sun, shining with equal glory on every land and on 
every man. 

So we, emancipated from the base-born feeling of caste, 
which now rules us with its rod of iron as tyrannically as 
it does the Brahmins of India or the nobility of England, will 
feel something of the length and breadth, the depth and 
hight of His purposes and feelings toward our race. To 
call every man brother, unmindful of all outward aspects ; 
to feel that he is your brother, absolutely, entirely ; to treat 
him as such, unconscious of any distinction between you, 
— how will the heart, thus freed, grow in the likeness and 
after the stature of its Creator and Redeemer ! It will have 
climbed the last of the mountains interposed that have made 
enemies of nations and of men. The whole landscape of 
man's futurity lies before him ; the land of Beulah, whither 
the race, with many weary pilgrim steps, is slowly tending, — 

" A land of corn, and wine, and oil, 
Favored with God's peculiar smile, 

With every blessing blest ; 
There dwells the Lord our righteousness, 
And keeps His own in perfect peace, 

And everlasting rest." 

We shall see all the sons of Adam at peace with them- 
selves and with their God. They speak one language. They 
feel the pulsations of a common brotherhood. While they 
have all the distinctions of a family, in taste and action — 
one a scholar, one an orator, one a merchant, one a me- 
chanic ; while each nation may have its special character 
after this sort, — as Italy is the home of art, Germany of 
thought, France of taste, and England of business, — yet 
like brothers of varied tastes and pursuits, they will rejoice 
in this diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. The varieties 



350 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

of complexion will be as agreeable as is now the variety 
of beautiful countenances. They will feel, not only no es- 
trangement, but a vehement rush of blood to blood. 

" Thither the warm affections move, 
Nor shall we call them thence." 

The whole earth will not seem too large to that Christian 
family — girded by steam, bound together by that electric 
cord which transmits the feelings and thoughts of the whole 
world as instantaneously as the brain communicates with 
the heart, they, 

" Like kindred drops, will mingle into one." * 

In the glory of that fast coming prospect, how the petty 
contractedness of our unseemly prejudice drops from us 
as fetters from the emancipated slave, as a strait-jacket 
from a cured maniac, as the weight of imbecility from 
the enlightened idiot ! This effluence of spiritual illumination 
will strike us more powerfully than it will our dark-complex- 
ioned brother. It will be a novel outgleaming to us, not 
to him. He has long felt the truth of the unity of Man. 
He has long known that he is your brother. It is strange, 
inconceivably strange to him, that you have not known that 
you are his. You so intelligent, so superior to him in your 
advantages, not to know this simplest and most fundamental 
of truths. The words of Christ are his sole refuge in his 
perplexity. " I thank Thee, Father, Maker of heaven and 
earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and 
prudent, and revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, 
for so it seems good in Thy sight. 7 ' 

How great the strides made in America in the last two 
years to this glorious consummation ! A friend of mine, a 
New York lawyer, had a fine Afric-European superintending 
his farm. The morning after the call for the first seventy- 
five thousand volunteers, the young man informed him that 

* See Note XII. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 351 

he could not work for him any longer. " "Why not ? " "I 
am going to war." " But you can't go." " Why not ? " 
He was ashamed to answer the glowing patriot, but he had 
to : " Because you are black ! " The poor fellow stood 
paralyzed, as if a bullet had pierced his heart. He had for- 
gotten all about his brown complexion. His heart was red 
with the hottest of patriot blood. The call made no refer- 
ence to white men. How was he excluded ? He shrunk 
back to his enforced shame, and we went about the task 
of saving the country without the aid of, with violent hos- 
tility towards, such as him, full one sixth of our people. 

God has taught us that we cannot be saved unless they 
are saved also. We are beginning to accept His terms. 
That young man can now be enrolled as a soldier. He may 
soon take rank as an officer. He, or such as he, may yet 
outrank and command their proud and half-hearted despisers, 
whose blood is of the same complexion as their skins. They 
are the true Copperheads that will save the Eepublic. They 
will go into this war, as Frederick Douglass says, not as 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, but as men. They 
will come out of it our recognized equals and associates. 
We shall be blood relations then, as never before. A com- 
mon baptism of sorrow and death will make us, at last, one 
people, and thus prepare the way for a universal family. 

The last thought, though distasteful to some of our 
brethren elsewhere, cannot be offensive to us. For last 
year, by a unanimous vote, we adopted a resolution de- 
nouncing the sin of caste. You remember the pregnant 
words : — 

" Resolved, That we deprecate the unchristian spirit of 
caste so prevalent throughout the North, and even among 
many professed anti-slavery men with respect to people of 
color, ancf we can never regard our reformatory work ac- 
complished till they enjoy equal rights and privileges with 
other classes." 



352 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

It is a high honor for this Conference to thus lead the 
Church, and for once to lead the reformatory section of the 
nation in the great movement. As our fathers, some of 
whom are still present, though most have fallen asleep, in 
advance of all other bodies of ministers, twenty-eight years 
ago proclaimed the duty of immediate and unconditional 
emancipation, elected delegates to the General Conference 
on that issue, and began the agitation which, with all its 
imperfections, has purged the Church, if not the Discipline, 
of arrogant slaveholders in the ministry and membership, 
and is fast purging the land, if it cannot the Constitution, 
of the like mass of proud and putrid flesh ; so this resolution 
is the first utterance by the Church of what will yet be a 
truth, universally and proudly recognized. 

Let our words and works agree. To do this will require 
the discharge of many duties yet in violent conflict with our 
pride and prejudice. May I mention a few of them ? 

1. We must expunge the word " colored " from our Min- 
utes. It ought never to have found a place there. How 
abominable that epithet must appear in the eyes of the 
Savior, by whom these His brethren were cleansed with the 
same blood, and, perchance, at the same moment and the 
same altar ! He does not write it in the Lamb's book of 
life — the heavenly Minutes of His church. Born into His 
divine family, we are nearer of kin to them than brothers of 
a human household. And yet we shamefully degrade them. 
How unchristian and inhuman such conduct is, may be seen 
from a single example. Suppose an unfortunate dwarf 
should join this church, and the pastor should return three 
hundred full grown adults and one dwarf; or if a dozen 
mutes, or blind, should become members, and we should 
make the like distinction, how quickly should we revolt from 
the revelation in ourselves of the old leaven of malice and 
wickedness ! What a torrent of indignation would be poured 
on our Missionary Board if they should publish in their East 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 353 

Indian returns their Brahmin and Pariah members in separate 
columns ! 

But the worst feature in this iniquity is, that it casts 
reproach on those who, by the pressure of an ungodly 
world, are already oppressed. The Gospel is especially 
tender towards the lowly and despised. We are especially 
cruel. It also inevitably breeds in us hardness of heart — 
the extreme opposite of the new heart, whose law is to 
esteem others better than ourselves. 

I was struck with this years ago, in a revival that oc- 
curred in a country town in the State of New York. The 
preacher, a godly brother, though not educated in this truth 
above the community in which he lived, was inviting sinners 
to the altar. Seeing some of his congregation urging the 
few of this class present to go forward, the thought dimly 
struck him that they were included in " all the world " whom 
they were singing about as being invited by Christ. So he 
said at the close of his invitation, " If there are any colored 
persons present wlio have souls, let them come forward also." 
To such a request no colored person who had a soul would 
be apt to respond. The same brother, in summing up the 
fruits of the revival, announced to the church that so many 
"had been converted, and John, Jane, and Dinah, colored 
persons." He was unconsciously but correctly conforming 
to the practice of our church. 

This distinction is the primum mobile of all our weakness. 
Had we boldly taken the ground of Paul at the beginning, 
refused to know white or black, bond or free, in the Church, 
made emancipated slaves our preachers and bishops, as he 
did Onesimus, mingled the whole in one pure and holy 
brotherhood, we should never have met with the difficulties 
we have. We should have grown less yet more. Our pro- 
slavery foes would not have been as they have been, and 
still are, those of our own household. Our strength would 
have increased uniformly, steadily, mightily. As it is, it 
23 



354 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

has been as it has. Let us go back to first principles. Let 
us cling to the corner-stone of Jesus Christ, the Brother 
alike of all men, the Brother especially of the poor, the op- 
pressed, and the despised. 

2. This resolution involves home duties also. Some of 
our churches yet permit invidious distinctions to be made 
between His brethren in the house and at the table of the 
Lord. They compel a portion of His family to sit together 
in an ignoble place, and to come together to His feast after 
they have concluded their banquet. Perhaps they think 
these servants of men are also servants of the Lord, and are 
therefore properly placed at the last table. I am afraid they, 
much more than their fellow-servants, are indeed the ser- 
vants of the Lord. How do James the Just's searching 
words try our reins and our heart in the light of such con- 
duct. " My brethren, hold not the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ with respect of persons ; for if ye say unto the " 
white member or visitor, " Sit thou here in a good place, and 
say unto " your colored brother, " Stand thou there, or sit 
here under my footstool, are ye not then partial in yourselves, 
and become approvers of evil thoughts ? Hearken, my be- 
loved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, 
rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath prom- 
ised to them that love Him ? But ye have despised the 
poor !" And that too, because of a complexion God gave 
them, and as handsome in His eyes as yours in yours. We 
should cease to allow this evil to be done. It should be 
instantly abolished from every church in this Conference. 

3. We should also abolish every colored church. All 
should melt into each other. All ye are brethren. 

4. These flourish for another and yet worse reason, which 
springs from the same false root. God is pleased to call 
some men to preach His gospel that are much nearer than 
we are to the complexion and lineage of Christ and His 
apostles. He pours grace upon their lips, so that all the 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 355 

world runs after them. But we call them negroes, or the 
more classic and more contemptuous word by which we 
designate this class, even if the Lord's anointed. They 
cannot minister to white people. They cannot associate 
with their not always whiter clerical brethren. We have no 
humility by which we love to kneel down and wash their 
feet, though that very deed was done by Christ, on this very 
night, to teach us this very lesson. It is not learned yet. 

We compromise with conscience by setting off others of 
our brethren to whom they shall minister. Thus America 
presents a spectacle seen nowhere else in Christendom, — 
seen never before in Christendom, — of a body of poor be- 
lievers, compelled by their brethren to worship by them- 
selves under the ban of public infamy, and a body of God's 
ministers, in like manner, compelled to make full proof of 
their ministry under like disgrace. I say it is not seen nor 
known anywhere else in the world, past or to-day. James 
thought he had touched the bottom of sinful distinctions 
when he dwelt on the partialities displayed in the same 
church. What would he have thought had the Holy Ghost 
required him to give warning to Christians against pushing 
a portion of their brethren, and of their ministry also, into 
separate churches — separated for no fault of their own, for 
no leprosy or disease that whitened skins, but because 
of a heaven-daring pride on the part of their kindred. 

This must be changed if we hope for the blessing of 
God. The ministry must lead in the change. The proudest 
churches in Europe are open to every body. You will find 
the beggar and the noble worshiping side by side at West- 
minster, the Madaleine, St. Peter's, everywhere. A minis- 
ter is a minister there, no matter of what blood or color. 
They are not without their prejudices, even against color. 
But they do not carry it to our extreme. On the contrary, 
they sometimes bravely overcome it. See Rev. Mr. Martin, 
of Boston, invited to two churches in London. The most 



356 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

eloquent preacher of his denomination, and probably of any 
denomination in our city, able to fill the Tremont Temple 
every Sunday, he was stuck in a poor little house in the 
Pariah quarter, and the Temple remained empty. Now he 
is the welcomed pastor of a church of Englishmen — the 
proudest blood in Europe to-day. Should a brother of like 
graces approach our doors, what would we do with our 
resolution ? Stand by it, should we not ? Admit him as 
our perfect equal, and cast the weight of our influence in 
favor of his receiving such a station as his talents merit. 

That this is the question of the age, a multitude of signs 
show. We cannot pass over one. From it learn all. You 
are aware of the great impression produced on the millions of 
people from all parts of the world, at the Great Exhibition, 
by Story's statue of the African prophetess — the Lybica 
Sybilla, as he called it. It took its place as the greatest 
contribution of genius ; and critics, in London reviews, 
discussed with much learning its relations to Greek and 
Egyptian art ; when, lo ! it appears from Mrs. Stowe's 
article in the Atlantic, that it is but the statue of a New 
York slave, seventy years of age. She is known to many 
here — an old John Street Methodist, who cannot read,- but 
who can do what is far better, she can talk. Sojourner 
Truth is the rude, ungainly name of a rude, ungainly African 
of the purest negro blood, who is the model of a statue sur- 
passing the Moses of Michael Angelo ; for that is but a 
marvel of genius ; this is the gospel for this generation — a 
new sermon of Christ's in stone. Europeans of every rank, 
with their yet haughtier American fellows, like Joseph's 
brethren, bow down to her whom they had sold into bondage 
— to all her race in her. 

But I have long since wearied you. J shall be happy if I 
have inflicted no heavier burden. I could not say less and 
fulfil the injunctions of the text. I feel that America is the 
center of the history of the world to-day. For good or evil, 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 357 

in wrath or mercy, God has lifted her up before all men — 
He has endowed her with preeminent privileges and op- 
portunities ; an estate of wondrous breadth and beauty ; 
fundamental ideas of civil and social life, that have been only 
the dreams of good and wise men in all other ages and 
places — a people knowing good and evil, full of enter- 
prise, of resources, of capacity, individual and concrete, 
such as all nations else have never seen ; an intelligence 
diffused like the light ; a quickness of conscience that is 
like fire shut up in the bones. Over such a nation, with 
such a heritage, in such an exaltation-, what infinite respon- 
sibilities hang ! To be its guides and molders, as God has 
made His Church and ministry, is a duty from which they 
may well shrink — of which they may justly be proud. 

Our liberties must be preserved and extended only through 
the Church. And the Church must be kept in its first estate 
and advanced to its complete perfection chiefly through its 
ministry. Upon you, then, as its divinely appointed of- 
ficers, eomes the responsibility. The ministry, the servants 
of the Church, are its authorized and responsible officers. 
God, not man, made the Church. He, not man, officers it. 
And He holds us accountable to Him, not to our fellow- 
Christians, much less to our fellow-men, for the manner in 
which we discharge that high office. If we bow clown to them, 
and serve them ; if, like Aaron, at command of the people, 
we make golden calves for their idolatry, their blood will He 
require at our hands. " See, I," not the Church, nor the 
Conference, nor the bishops, " I have set thee a watchman 
on the walls of Zion," on the towers of time. 

It is but for a moment that we stand here. Death soon 
shoots us down. A more insatiate archer may first slay us, 
if we are not vigilant and courageous. It is but a little step 
from our post to the headquarters of our Commander. 
Hither we must ceaselessly go for orders. We must pro- 
claim them at the head of our several regiments, and see 



358 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 

that the subordinate officers and soldiers observe them. 
We must proclaim them to the hosts of rebellion, without 
fear, without bitterness, without favor, without weariness. 

Our encouragements may come partly from the Church, 
but preeminently from God. It is a good and blessed 
reward for one to have his praise in all the churches. It is 
far better to have the approval of God. 

There are times when every Church needs to be lifted up 
out of itself. The Seven Churches required such treatment. 
They were settling down into worldliness. They must be 
stirred up, or they sleep the sleep that knows no waking. 
He is seldom popular who is set for this work. Paul had 
to say to his Corinthian brethren, with almost an air of 
hauteur, " With me it is a very small thing that I should be 
judged of you or of man's judgment." Edwards was driven 
forth into the wilderness, and among savages, by his aristo- 
cratic church of Northampton, after it had been blessed, 
under his labors, with the greatest revival it had ever en- 
joyed, simply because he scourged a popular sin. They 
show you the narrow, low door beside the chancel of the 
Epworth Church out of which John Wesley was thrust, as 
Christ out of Nazareth, by his fellow-townsmen, led by 
his father's successor and his father's vestrymen. St. 
Mary's, the university Church of Oxford, yet testifies, in its 
Christless vibration between Romanistic formalism and Broad 
Church rationalism, to the crimes of those who, a century 
and a quarter ago, expelled from her pulpit the same great 
advocate, because he proclaimed that central truth of 
Luther's preaching, and of a vital Christianity, Justification 
by Faith. 

Yet these men were not alone ; nor will you be, if 
ordered to like duty. The Captain of the Hosts of the Lord 
is with you. His still, small voice ever strengthens you. 

Finally. To save this land to universal liberty and univer- 
sal brotherhood, supported by universal law and sanctified 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 359 

by universal piety, is to save all lands. It may take all our 
sons, all our treasure, all our generation to destroy the 
enemy that is seeking to prevent this consummation. It 
may take a longer time and greater struggles to destroy 
the enemy within us, that with profounder and more power- 
ful force works for the same diabolical end. But if we are 
faithful to our principles and our God, we shall triumph over 
both. We shall subdue the rebellious host without and 
the rebellious spirit within. 

Then shall other nations behold the image of the trans- 
figured Christ shining in our uplifted face, that will glow, 
like that of Moses, with the radiance of His divine coun- 
tenance. European caste and tyranny, tottering everywhere 
to its downfall, will speedily disappear, and the same 
Christian union and liberty, " like a sea of glory, will spread 
from pole to pole." 

"Half of Europe will come to America if you break up 
this rebellion," was the last word almost that was spoken 
to me as I was leaving the city of Liverpool. All of 
America, in its influence, will go to Europe, will go over 
the earth, not in the boastful spirit of national pride, but 
in the humble spirit of Christian love. We have nothing we 
have not received. We shall then only be a member of an 
equal, universal, happy family, the family of Christ. 

However dim and distant that glorious hour may seem to 
our weary-watching eyes, we are required to labor for it, 
in private and public, in ourselves, the Church, the nation, 
the world. May we to that end, to-day, purge out the old 
leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may be a new 
lump, sanctified and set apart for the Master's use. Then 
shall this beautiful parable of the poet be to us henceforth 
and forever a blessed realization : — 

" A Brahmin on a lotus pod 
Once wrote the holy name of God. 



360 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN" BROTHERHOOD. 

Then, planting it, he asked in prayer, 
Eor some new fruit unknown and fair. 

A slave near by, who bore a load, 
Eell fainting on the dusty road. 

The Brahmin pitying, straightway ran. 
And lifted up the fallen man. 

The deed scarce done, he stood aghast, 
At touching one beneath his caste. 

' Behold,' he cried, ' I am unclean, 

My hands have clasped the rile and mean.' 

God saw the shadow on his face, 
And wrought a miracle of grace. 

The buried seed arose from death, 
And bloomed and fruited at his breath. 

The stalk bore up a leaf of green, 
Whereon these mystic words were seen : 

First, count men all of equal caste, 
then count thyself the least axd last. 

The Brahmin, with bewildered brain, 
Beheld the will of God writ plain. 

Transfigured then, in sudden light, 
The slave stood sacred in his sight. 

Thereafter, in the Brahmin's breast, 
Abode God's peace, and he was blest." 




THE CHUECH AND THE NEGKO.* 





lagg* 



HE Church Anti-Slavery Society : — is not that 
tautological ? A repetition that ought to be, if 
it is not, vain ? The first includes the last. If 
it is truly the Church, it is also by necessity the 
Anti-Slavery Society ; for the greater ever includes the less. 
Thus it was when its creed and sacraments were first 
given. The Hebrews had two articles of faith — anti- 
idolatry and anti-slavery. The first had been taught them 
by the divine miracles, the last by their own suffering and 
salvation. Bunsen says that " History was born on the 
night of Exodus." So was Abolitionism and the Church 
as a congregation of believers. These twain were twins. 

Never before had human slavery been abolished by divine 
decree ; never since, by a single act, on so grand a scale, 
save by the decree of last January. But the difference be- 
tween the two was the simple, yet all-important difference, 
between a proclamation and an execution. God abolished 
Hebrew slavery. He set His millions free. He made their 
enemies to sink like lead in the mighty waters. We only 



* An address delivered in Tremont Temple, before the Church Anti- 
Slavery Society, June 10, 1863. 

(361) 



362 THE CHUECH AND THE XEGEO. 

say ours are free, and still but half protect the freedmen, 
even if in our armies, from worse than Pharaoh's assaults. 

The Old Testament cannot, therefore, indorse human bond- 
age. It was based on human freedom. Its original people 
were, by creation and necessity, abolitionists. While as 
yet no glimmering of the hideousness of slavery had dawned 
upon the moral sense of the world, God revealed its char- 
acter by emancipating a race. 

These freedmen He organized into a nation. For the 
corner-stone of their constitution He placed Abolitionism. 
On the top of Sinai, before He enunciated a moral or a civil 
institute, — the higher and the lower law, — He proclaims His 
abolitionism. "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee 
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. " 

His edicts not only abolish slavery, they abolish caste. 
The laws of Moses are the essence of democracy. In all 
eastern and all old countries there are families that have 
served for generations, as there are those that have ruled. 
To prevent this tendency, God proclaims every seven years, 
and at the outside, every fifty years, a complete abolishment 
of such relations. No father shall entail his servitude, how- 
ever slight, on his children. All persons are equal. Had 
these laws been faithfully executed — which they never were 
— they would have preserved Israel from a monarchy, and 
so from ruin. This perpetuation of the inferior status of a 
family, from generation to generation, is the distinguished 
peculiarity of England. It is the stronghold of its aristoc- 
racy and its throne. It is against the pattern of civil soci- 
ety given in the Mount, which was a democracy of equal 
freemen. 

It may be said that they were permitted to enslave the 
heathen. Not so. Their time and labor were bought for a 
season, as was that of the poorer of our ancestors in the 
early emigrations to this continent ; but they could not 
make a contract that held over seven years, except in 



THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 363 

most rare cases, when the heathen were permitted to bind 
themselves, not their masters to bind them, for a lifetime. 
The Jews could not then sell these self-bound servants, nor 
had they power over their children ; nor could they hold 
them a moment after they acknowledged the true faith. 

How long would slavery have existed in the South if 
these three conditions had been imposed upon it ? How 
long-, if the last only had been adhered to ? It was so 
once in Maryland. The baptized slave became a free man ; 
now he is sold for a higher price. By the law of Moses, 
as rendered by these critics, the masters should be slaves 
of their slaves, for they are by far the worse heathen. 

How profane, in the light of these facts, have been the 
ceaseless utterances of the Southern pulpits, and the too 
general utterance of the Northern, that the Israelites estab- 
lished slavery. Their laws were against it, their animus 
against it, their origin against it, their God against it. 

The New Testament is equally anti-slavery. It is more 
spoken against than theatric exhibitions or gladiatorial 
shows. These are never specifically condemned, though 
they were universal. They are frequently employed to 
illustrate the Christian life. The apostle refers to an expe- 
rience of the latter class among the beasts of Ephesus, with 
no hint that it was immoral. So is it almost speechless 
against the sin of war, then universal, and inspired solely 
by lust of robbery or power, and unspeakably cruel against 
the innocent. Yet see how John seems to revel in it ! Had 
he spoken thus of slavery, what a perversion would its 
monomaniacs have made of his illustrations ! Slavery is 
condemned more frequently and more severely than them 
all. 

The New Testament Gentile Church was comprised 
almost as exclusively of slaves as was the Mosaic Church, 
— as has been the real Church of Christ in the South. The 
lowest class chiefly embraced it. The Abyssinian eunuch 



364 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 

was an Ethiopian slave. They of Caesar's household were 
largely Caesar's slaves. Why should the apostles preach 
to them of the evils of slavery ? They knew it by a fearful 
experience. We have prated loudly about the divine right 
of slavery, but there was one class of the population to 
whom we never addressed such remarks — the slaves them- 
selves. How superbly foolish would have been such preach- 
ing. Equally foolish would have been like preaching on 
the part of Paul and his associates. Paul rejoiced in his 
freedom. The Centurion declares how much it cost him. 
It was a subject that was evidently one of intense interest 
to both parties. The very fact of Paul's being free, and 
proudly availing himself of its privileges in avoiding pun- 
ishments to which his brethren were often subjected, speaks 
volumes as to the opinion of the early Church on this 
question. 

More than this, the New Testament especially enjoins 
upon the master to give his slave liberty, and upon the 
slave to run away if he has a fair chance of thus securing 
his freedom. 

If a sympathizer with slavery happened to be a preacher 
to slaves, as 'too many have been, and he should scatter 
among his parishioners this sentence of Paul's, " If ye may 
be free, use it rather," how would they understand it ? 
How would their masters, if they should hear of it, treat 
such a circulator of the Scriptures without note or com- 
ment ? The frequency of like remarks by the apostles 
gives tone and character to all the New Testament. It is 
in marked contrast with all cotemporary literature. 

Slavery was abolished in Europe by the Church. She 
sold the sacred vessels from her altar to redeem her breth- 
ren. She bought your yellow-haired fathers, chained cap- 
tives in the market-place of Eome, from their dark-skinned 
" owners," who, undoubtedly, entertained very strong prej- 
udices against their red locks and white faces. 



THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 365 

She would have abolished aristocracy and monarchy had 
she not been betrayed into an oligarchy herself, and so be- 
came the natural ally and servile tool of kindred castes in 
the State. 

" The Church Anti-Slavery Society " is, therefore, a ver- 
bal repetition. If we appeal to its origin and early history, 
it is a real repetition. Alas ! that it is not in its latest and 
American history. It is too late now to repent. The mis- 
sion of abolishing slavery was offered to the Church of Amer- 
ica, as it was to that of Europe. Theirs was faithful to 
their trust, ours not. And so God has been compelled to 
take the work into His own hands. He has poured out 
upon us the plague of war and its abounding miseries, be- 
cause His Church would not testify and toil for the salvation 
of their brethren ; because it arrayed itself by indifference 
or b}^ open violence against its brethren. He had not forgot- 
ten the preamble of His Sinai declaration of Hebrew indepen- 
dence. He had not forgotten His like proclamation at the 
beginning of His ministry in Nazareth. He had not forgotten 
our declarations both as a nation and as churches. We had. 

I do not say that all the Church was silent and sinful. 
Many testified, as local bodies, as individual preachers, 
striving according to His working, which worked in them 
mightily to save the Church from apostasy and silence, their 
brethren from slavery, and their nation from war and de- 
struction. But no great ecclesiastical body, as such, engaged 
in this work. They almost unanimously strove against it. 
They resisted those who sought to bring them into active 
and determined hostility to the sin. They wilfully extracted 
the vigor from resolutions they could not table, and care- 
fully abstained from the execution of the tame decrees they 
were compelled to declare by pressure of outward fear, and 
not of inward inspiration. 

This is a painful but most patent truth. What is written 
is written. We cannot recall the past. Our record of the 



366 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 

past generation, as the American Church, is laid up in the 
archives of history. It will be collated and kept, with the 
records of other eras, places, and branches of the Church. 
It is laid up on high. Where is the bishop who, like Greg- 
ory of Rome, has used the treasures of the Church for the 
emancipation of our enslaved brethren ? Where is the synod, 
assembly, or conference of a whole Church that has ex- 
pelled the "owners" of their own members from their com- 
munion, proclaimed themselves, exultingly and ceaselessly, 
abolitionists, and uttered the decree of God without waver- 
ing, and with divine boldness, in the ears of a slumbering 
and sinning nation ? 

We ought not to have spent a dollar for missionary work 
abroad. It ought all to have gone for the manumission of 
slaves at home. Such testimony, backed by such liberality, 
would have cleansed the land of its curse, placed the Church, 
where she is not, far above all rivalries of anti-church re- 
formers, and given her a position and influence that to-day 
would have covered this land with the fullness of millennial 
glory. How painful the contrast. See it in that perfect 
daguerreotype of ourselves — the Church of Thyatira. 
" These things, saith the Son of God, who hath eyes like a 
flame of fire. ... I know thy works, and charity, and ser- 
vice, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works, and the 
last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a 
few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman 
Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess " (that is, a 
Christian minister), "to teach and seduce my servants to 
commit fornication. . . . And I gave her space to repent 
of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold I will cast 
her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into 
great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I 
will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall 
know that I am He which searcheth the'reins and the hearts." 

The churches and the world have known it. The South- 



THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 367 

ern Church, the chief transgressor with this Jezebel, has 
suffered the most with her. We have partially repented, 
and so have partially escaped. 

It is useless to dwell constantly on the past. It is right 
to repent, to see what might have been, and to lament what 
is. Yet it is wrong to pause there. The future is yet be- 
fore us. The sincerity of our repentance must be shown by 
the manner in which we fill that future. 

The Church, as an Anti-Slavery Society, has but little 
work left for it to do. The red right arm of God is achiev- 
ing the redemption which He would fain have wrought 
through his Church. Yet there is a mission before us as 
great as that we have neglected. It is possible for us 
to cover the shame we cannot obliterate with valor and 
vigor in a service that peculiarly belongs to the Church of 
Christ. 

" What/' you exclaim, " are we to have no rest from this 
agitation ? Shall we not be permitted to devote ourselves 
exclusively to personal and ecclesiastical edification, with- 
out further intrusion of this offensive theme ? " Nay, the 
Church has no pause in her mission, any more than her 
Maker has in His. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work," — she, as well as her Master, must ever say, — 

" Beneath the solemn arch 
Naught resteth nor is still." 

To purge herself and the world of sin, to build up human 
society after the model of the heavenly society, demand 
unceasing effort. The real cause of all this woe is far from 
cured by universal emancipation. 

The slave is gone, the negro remains. Many abolition- 
ists, and all mere unionists and partisans, have fancied their 
sole work was to liberate the slaves. It is their least work. 
We are to be made one family. There are feelings and 
usages contrary to this, almost as abhorrent, yea, every 



368 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 

whit as abhorrent in the sight of God, as the ownership 
of man, which lie in our hearts and in the customs of 
society a hideous lump, " heavy as lead, and deep almost 
as life." 

The basis of slavery is caste. That feeling of caste yet 
prevails exceedingly over all the land. The blackness cov- 
ers our hearts deeper than it does the faces of our brethren. 
It must be removed. Nowhere in the world except with 
us does it have powerful dominion. In Asia, Mexico, West 
Indies, the Southern States, it is practically unknown. It 
has no real existence in us. Black coverings are preferred 
for the top of the head, as the abundance of advertisements 
of hair dyes testify. How much worse is the hair than the 
face ? The black-gloved, and so black-skinned hand, is 
esteemed comely ; so is the black-clothed, and therefore 
practically, black-skinned body. A strip of white linen 
around the neck and on the breast, and a bit of white flesh 
between the forehead and the black-bearded mouth, are the 
only specks of Caucasianism in an American gentleman in 
full dress. From hat to boots, Paris declares, and Broad- 
way confesses, an " inky suit of customary black " is the 
requisite of a gentleman. And yet we pretend that we 
have a natural antipathy to color. How foolish ! A black 
man in a white vest is more of a white man than we in our 
fashionable costume. 

The Southern States will soon settle this problem when 
peace and liberty prevail there. A Baltimore gentleman, 
of the highest social standing, said to me, "that he had 
long advocated the admission of half negroes to social equal- 
ity with their white kindred." That event will come, and 
with it the inevitable recognition of the other half of their 
blood, and so of the whole of the attainted color. And 
when Southern gentlemen lounge through our Saratogas' 
and Newports with their elegant quadroon wives on their 
arms, we, who follow fashion more than principle, will be 



THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 369 

as profusely eulogistic and servilely imitative as we have 
been in commending and copying their diabolic contempt. 

It is unchristian : they are our brethren and sisters ; they 
should be treated as such. Dare you insult your own sister 
for any real or seeming deformity ? Dare you expel her 
from the family circle ? Would you allow another to taunt 
her with her sinless misfortune ? How dare the Church to 
allow others to treat thus her sisters and brethren ; nay, how 
dare she to treat them herself as she has, and yet hope for 
the blessing of God ? "I thank Thee that I am not as this 
negro, " has been our daily prayer in the temple of God. 
Have we gone down to our houses justified of God ? Our 
first duty is to make ourselves one with these, as Christ's 
first duty was to make Himself one with us. He became 
like unto His brethren; so must we. Will the Church seize 
the opportunity, trample out this prejudice, and thus deliver 
herself from destruction ? I cannot say yes ; can you ? I 
am afraid she will not. 

Both army and people will give the highest military and 
political honors to the black man before the Church con- 
cedes him equal rights with his brethren. The regiment 
that is to inaugurate the era of real democracy in our land 
will march through our streets to-morrow.* We have not 
yet dared to make its officers of the same blood as its pri- 
vates ; but we shall. We could to-day without awakening 
any feelings of animosity. I asked Mr. Douglass, when at 
the camp the other day, why he had not command of the 
regiment ? " Don't insult me," he replied. " I have had 
hundreds of applications from white gentlemen to use my 
influence to get them commissions, but they tell me the 
times are not yet ripe for commissions to our people." They 
soon will be. They have had straps long enough upon 
their backs ; it is time they had them on their shoulders. 

* See Note XIII. 
24 



370 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 

And yet that day, I fear, will find the Church fast bound in 
these chains of Satan. Frederick Douglass may be Major 
General, may be Senator Douglass, representing the Empire 
State in Congress, and, as I heard a New Yorker say, "the 
only Senator Douglass that will be known in history,'' be- 
fore any one of his clerical brethren will be settled over 
such a congregation as this. They are already in the bar 
of this city, in the medical fraternity of this State, the 
acknowledged equals, often the associates of our first law- 
yers and doctors. Into what conference, association, or 
synod are they admitted as co-workers and brethren ? 

God will chastise the Church if she persists in the hard- 
ness and impenitence of heart, by not only taking, as Christ 
threatens, the vineyard from her, but by giving it to these 
with whom she refuses to fraternize. See one token of this: 
The regimental banner of the Fifty-Fourth is a cross of 
gold, with In hoc signo vinces inscribed beneath. This is 
the first Christian banner that has gone into the war. It is 
the first Christian flag ever unfurled in the American nation. 
It is the oldest flag of Christianity. Is it not significant ? 
God has thus made this despised class the leaders of the 
nation. " He has put down the mighty from their seats, 
and exalted them of low degree." The last shall be first. 
They are the true Christ-bearers. They have borne His 
Cross in unspeakable misery, oppression, agony, and degra- 
dation ; they are now bearing it in honor, we believe unto 
great glory. At one step they take precedence of the mil- 
lion of their white forerunners. No regiment in the United 
States has had grace enough to put that upon its standard. 
This has : they shall not lose their reward. They stand up 
for Jesus ; He will for them. 

Let us, my friends, gird up our loins for the great duties 
of the future. 

" Never had Christians such high call before; 
Never can Christians hope for higher one ; 



THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 371 

And if they are but faithful to their trust, 
Earth will remember them with love and joy; 
And O, far better, God will not forget ! " 

Let the Church take up this class, in the infancy of its 
freedom, in her arms and bless them. God delivered Israel 
in a night ; it took forty years to make them a people — so 
may it now. It is a work that will bless us more than them. 
He would have done that work in two years had that people 
been willing to cooperate with Him. So will He hasten 
to bring this people into their promised land. They are 
ready to obey Him. Will we lend an accordant hand ? 
Will you be co-workers together with God ? Will you 
cease to harbor this most unchristian pride and bitterness ? 
Or will you act the Moabite and Edomite to these your 
kinsfolk, wearily approaching your borders, and seek to 
drive them back into their bondage, or to keep them from 
their purchased, and promised, and most fairly earned pos- 
sessions ? If you do thus treat them, be assured that God 
will punish you as He did those disdainful relatives of His 
chosen children. "God will smite thee, thou whited wall," 
shall be said to every white-skinned scorner and repeller of 
his browner, and, in this feeling, better brother. 

As our Master gained a Name that is above every name 
by humbling Himself to us outcasts of the universe, so will 
the Church be uplifted by descending to these her breth- 
ren. Uproot and expel the iniquitous prejudice from your 
souls. Say with the fairest and finest of Shakspeare's 
heroines, — 

" I see Othello's visage in his mind, 
And to his honors and his valiant parts 
Do I my soul and fortunes consecrate." 

The hour is propitious. The great deeps of social pride 
are breaking up. The Church can take the lead in these 
divine movements if she will. She can drive this spirit of 



372 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 

caste from the Temple of Christ — a spirit more mean and 
sinful than that which He scourged from His Father's 
house. Let us cast it out of our stores, our shops, our 
families, our pews, and our pulpits, yea, and first of all, 
out of our own hearts. Then shall it flee the land, and 
the Church, redeemed by her valor and faithfulness from 
her shame and sin, shall be without spot or wrinkle, the 
Lamb's wife, winning and transforming the whole world 
to her own loveliness, blessedness, and peace. 



THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM.' 



" They shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over- 
come them." — Revelation xvii. 14. 




HE relation of the present conflict to the Millen- 
nium ? "A very distant relation, " you may say. 
Can war and the thousand years of warlessness be 
kindred ? Can the bloody feet of battle be shod 
with the preparation of the gospel of peace ? Such is the 
doctrine of the Word and Providence of God. War is the 
forerunner of the Gospel, the one who cries, "Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord ! " and what he cries, he does. The 
Bible describes the advent of that hour as full of the tumults 
and deaths of strife. They may have a Biblical, a divine 
conjunction. Is ours one of that class ? Is God appointing 
and directing it to the consummation of His desires, or is it 
simply a bloody feud without meaning or end ? 
To see this more fully, consider, 

I. What is the Millennium ? 

II. What are the principles involved in this struggle ? 

III. How are these related in affinity and time ? 



* A sermon preached in Boston, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 
1863. The battle of Lookout Mountain was fought on the 24th of No- 
vember, and that of Missionary Kidge on the 25th. 

(373) 



374 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

I. What is the Millennium ? We need not plunge into the 
morass of speculation as to the time or circumstances of the 
Millennial year. Some fancy that it precedes the final resur- 
rection, some that it follows it. Some believe the present 
race and earth will be^ destroyed, or rejuvenated by miracu- 
lous intervention in the present order of things ; others 
believe that the present race of man, under its present cir- 
cumstances, will occupy the present earth, changed in naught 
save sin. Whatever be our theories as to the mode of its 
Coming and existence, all who believe in it agree as to its 
character. It is simply the triumph of Christ over Satan in 
the hearts and lives, the laws and institutions, of man. 
What that war is between Christ and anti-Christ, all hearts 
that know themselves, too painfully understand. It is 
spiritual, vital, all penetrating, all embracing. It is a strug- 
gle as to whether man shall be saved from sin, or kept in 
sin. It is an attempt to make the earth a heaven or a hell. 

This war begins in our moral nature, and in the sovereign 
head of that nature, the free will. It extends through every 
emotion, sensibility, intellect, appetite, habit, custom, law, 
or institution, whether of the individual or society. It ex- 
tends its vast, imperceptible influences to the lowest orders 
of creation, and even the lifeless elements of earth and air. 
At the first revolt of the reigning will in man from its super- 
reigning Creator, — 

" Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat 
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe 
That all was lost." 

The ground was cursed because of his sin. It rolls in 
waves, it cleaves in fire, it is frozen in winter, it is parched 
in summer, for thy sake, man. Not the ground alone is 
affected, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
together until now. The whole creation is to be restored 
only by the restoration of man. His new creation can alone 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY EIDGE. 375 

renew the face of the earth. As is the fall, so must the 
rising be. As the struggle, so the triumph. The plunge 
was through Satan unto sin, the deliverance must be through 
Christ unto holiness. 

The perfected deliverance is the Millennium. It is God 
again at the helm of the soul, voluntarily restored there 
as He was voluntarily expelled ; God moving thence through 
every thought, impulse, volition, bringing all into subjection 
to Him ; God thus sanctifying every part of every soul, and 
making them communities of holiness, centers of sacred life, 
sweeping away by their personal and united grace the curse 
and the crime of civil and social life, working in healing 
influences in the animate creation and in the earth itself, 
until "the statelier Eden comes again " to a long-degraded 
and ruined world. This is the essence of the Christian, the 
Bible Millennium. This was promised to the first trans- 
gressor on his first repentance. It gladdened far off his pen- 
itent eyes, — 

" Fair as a star when only one 
Is shining in the sky." 

It grew nearer and clearer to the faith of Abraham. The 
solitary star had become a cluster, a hemisphere sprinkled 
with beaming hopes. The Lord Jehovah Jesus, in the 
solemn midnight, centuries ago, visited him in his little 
black, goat-skin tent, under the rocky range of Hebron, and 
brought him forth from its lowly, flapping door into the 
hollow of the darkened hills. Far up the clear depths with- 
in depths he beheld — 

" The abyss where the everlasting stars abide." 

" Look now toward heaven," said his divine guide, " and 
tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. So shall thy 
seed be. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth 
be blessed." 

And yet he was then the only representative of that 



376 THE WAE AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

multitude and blessedness in all the earth. The mighty 
idolatries of Egypt, among which he had dwelt, were in the 
hight of their seemingly eternal solidity of strength and 
glory. Their temples, stout as the pillars of earth, were 
then going up. Their pyramids, defying the shocks of the 
reeling globe or the bolts of shattering lightning, were then 
exquisitely cutting the crystal sky with their perfect lines. 
The Assyrian kingdom, within whose boundaries he was 
born, and whose Euphratean metropolis he not unlikely had 
visited in his youth, was then exultant in the unlimited pomp 
and sway of a Satanic faith. The deluge of spiritual death 
rose higher than the highest mountains of society, filled the 
whole earth, every dell, and cleft, and crevice of every heart 
of every people. His soul alone floated on the desolate, 
rainy seas, a spiritual ark, built and guided of God, in whose 
holy recesses the faith of his wife and son, and to a less 
degree his nephews, were also carried. 

Jacob's dying eyes beheld the like vision under a slight 
increase of the on-marching light. A few score of his own 
blood, separated from the rest of the world as unclean, are 
all that profess the true and saving faith ; and these are 
worldly, violent, corrupt, differing from their heathen neigh- 
bors in but little more than their creed, and often inferior 
to them in dignity and excellency of character. Levi, the 
father of the priestly line, was shamed by the mildness and 
manliness of Shechem, the pagan. Judah, from whom Christ 
came, stamped himself and his tribe with indelible infamy. 
Reuben had gone still further in sin, and done deeds that even 
in that darkened age struck the public conscience with ab- 
horrence, and called down upon him the dying maledictions 
of his father. 

Yet with these men standing about his couch, the aged 
patriarch sees the coming Shiloh, the Messiah of God, and 
declares that to Him shall the gathering of the peoples be. 
The blessing that Abraham saw conferred in Christ upon all 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 377 

the world, Jacob sees is responded to by all the world. The 
nations shall gather about the Sent of God. Though not a na- 
tion then acknowledged Him ; though only a few wild, wan- 
dering men, sons of a thrifty, itinerant shepherd accepted 
this announcement without perception of its meaning or 
desire for its consummation ; though judging from his com- 
mandments concerning his bones, Joseph was the only one 
present that really possessed his father's faith in his father's 
clearness and confidence, still the word is spoken. The 
world shall come to the feet of Him who comes from God 
through the line of Judah. 

How this ray is multiplied in the widening light of Scripture 
history ! How proud stand David and Isaiah on the misty 
mountain tops of this dawning glory ! How clear, and round, 
and shining it cuts the horizon at Bethlehem and Nazareth, 
so simple, so lustrous, so pure, so grand, the very bright- 
ness of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ ! How 
this light increases in the pages that follow that advent and 
conclude the oracles of God ! The confinement of the truth 
to a single man, a single family, a single tribe, a single 
nation, the necessity for all who would receive it to become 
members of this household, is suddenly changed. As in 
the night we can overcome th*e darkness only by seeking 
the light, while in the day the light seeks us, so in the ages 
before Shiloh came the world must ally itself to Judah, if it 
would enjoy heavenly vision ; but after His advent the 
divine light goeth out into all the world. The deeds of the 
apostles show that this power is moving out for the sub- 
jugation and ingathering of the world, East, West, North, 
and South. Down to Ethiopia, over to Syria, up in Asia 
Minor, far over to the forest depths of Illyricum, out to the 
gates of Gibraltar, to Damascus, most ancient of cities, 
Antioch, most wealthy, Athens, most cultivated, Corinth, 
most luxurious, Rome, most imperial, everywhere mightily 
grew the word of God and prevailed. This omnipotent 



378 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

assault of the Spirit of God on the spirit of evil abounds and 
superabounds in the closing- chapters of the Book. Then all 
the trumpets of heaven, with one acclaim, are ringing out the 
conquests of Christ over Satan in all the earth. The slow, 
dubious, often utterly imperceptible movements of the pre- 
advent age are changed to the most intense and increasing 
energy. Vials ever pouring, horsemen, as on battle-fields, 
fiercely riding, war rapidly following war, the Captain of 
the Hosts of the Lord pressing home His victories, giving 
His baffled enemy no chance to rest and repair his loss, 
driving him from his central throne, within twelve genera- 
tions after His crucifixion, and thus expelling Him from the 
sovereignty of what is called in the New Testament, " the 
inhabitable world," and in the Roman writers, the " orbis 
terrarum," the globe of the earth. 

Driven to his savage devotees, Antichrist rallies these 
vilest of his slaves and hurls them at the Christian empire. 
The empire, backslidden, is seemingly destroye,d, when, lo, 
the savages, under the genial penetration of Christian grace, 
become the saviors of civilization. They are as fresh soil 
to worn-out lands. Christianity converts them, not they it. 
Thus Christ advances, till to-day only three organized and 
prominent powers in all the earth deny the divinity and 
redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ, — the Chinese, the Turk- 
ish, the Japanese. The first two have yielded practically 
their independence, and live only by the sufferance or 
mutual jealousies of their Christian neighbors, while at the 
gates of the last the guns of three powers are now thunder- 
ing, the unconscious servants of Christ, battering down, not 
Japan, but its idols and false worship. 

The rebellion of man under the inspiration of Satan grows 
weaker year by year. The Revelator's far-off vision from 
the sharp, bare cliffs of Patmos, is our careless, every-day, 
mid-noon brightness. The power of Antichrist was then 
supreme. Across the smooth, black waves the hills of 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 379 

Ephesus could be easily seen. On their farther sides, per- 
haps visible through the opening which gave her a harbor, 
Diana's wonderful temple glitters in the golden light of that 
gorgeous clime. Across the opposite and wider sea — 

" The earth then wore the Parthenon 
The brightest gem upon her zone." 

No decay then blackened its shining pillars, no rifts 
marred its matchless symmetry. Its goddess, sixty feet 
tall, of ivory and gold, towered as the representative of that 
worldly wisdom which is to-day the most pretentious of all 
the enemies of Christ. Just below, Corinth was ablaze with 
a magnificence that was all devoted to the most open and 
shameful lust. Below Ephesus the horrid foulnesses of 
Phenician abominations flourished in opulent Antioch. In 
sight lay the birth-place of Homer, who had clothed the 
false offspring of false gods in the regalest robes of melody 
and imagination ; and close beside him was the home of 
Pythagoras*, who had sought to give them the dignity and 
authority of reason. Everywhere about him was Rome, in 
closest amity with the enemy of God and man. Zealously 
she followed his commands and shook her sceptre, full of fear 
and death, over the trembling, scattered sheep of Christ. 
Yet he saw through and beyond, above and around all this 
dominion of darkness the bright, divine future, and was 
glad. 

Such is the Millennium in prophecy and history, in 
progress and perfection. 

II. What connection has our war with this consummation ? 
The progress of the promised grace has subdued its first 
enemy, idolatry. This destroyed man's allegiance to God. 
It must subdue the second enemy, which is man's hostility 
to man. This hostility assumes civil and social forms. It 
is monarchic, slavic, disuniting. Against these, march 
democracy, unity, fraternity, every man the equal and the 



380 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

brother of every man. To gain this victory we are now 
contending. 

1. The separation of man by artificial social barriers is one 
of the earliest and deepest expressions of our rebellious na- 
ture. Ambition, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is the first 
of ignoble. Success gratifies it, power solidifies it. When 
solidified, immediately the priest consecrates it, and to deny 
its divinity is sacrilege. That is the way the monarchic and 
aristocratic systems have always grown. England's social 
structure, the proudest, and richest, and wickedest of any 
that controls civilized society, has grown exclusively from 
this seed. A robber chief, with a few hundred retainers, 
lands on her coast, throws his sword into the balance of a 
civil war, reduces both foes and allies to slavery, parcels 
out the lands, confers titles, appoints bishops and cardinals 
to sanctify his crime, and thus establishes the present gov- 
ernment of England. The crimes, in which Kinglake so 
forcibly shows that the present Napoleon laid his power, 
were few and trifling beside these out of which Victoria's 
throne has been built. But few and small as they were, they 
were of like character, and show that the eight centuries that 
separate their commission have not modified their nature. 

All governments based on the few, by the few, and for 
the few, are hostile to the government of Christ, and must 
be abolished before His glory fully comes. They were con- 
ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. They breed pride, 
licentiousness, violence in the ruler, — poverty, cowardice, 
sycophancy, ignorance, lawlessness in the ruled. The 
Papal Church, and its eldest daughter, the Church of Eng- 
land, are oligarchies. They uphold civil by religious 
tyranny. Not so the first and future Church. That is 
Democracy. Her people are equal each to each, and their 
pastor's superiority is not one of authority but of service. 
The governments of man and of the Church must correspond. 
Both must be a brotherhood of equals. 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 381 

2. Then comes the unification of Man. Unless he is one, 
Church nor State can ever be one. Christ cannot be the 
Head of our household. Whatever opposes this consumma- 
tion, — blood, language, color, caste, — must give way, that 
Christ may be all and in all. 

These vital principles are involved in our struggle. The 
first we saw at the first. So the whole world, kings 
and peoples, instinctively saw that the struggle was over 
that idea, over both ideas. The nation hailed the first with 
unbounded fervor — Union for the sake of Union. But 
thoughtful men hailed the grander idea that rose behind 
and above it, — 

" Another sun risen on mid noon," — 

the Equality and Fraternity of Man. Union, not for our- 
selves alone, but for all men, was our strongest, our most 
general feeling. It carried us safely over the disastrous 
days of our first defeats, through that first winter of fearful 
idleness, when the riotous rebels built their camp-fires and 
boiled the bones of our slain heroes in sight of our capital. 
It carried us through the still more terrible calamities of the 
Peninsula defeats, and the yet severer defeat of our confi- 
dence in the commander of that campaign. 

But the people clung with increasing devotion to their 
idea, and its embodiment in American nationality. Three 
hundred thousand men hastened to cast themselves into the 
gulf, that Union and democracy might be preserved. 

The second, and even darker winter, came upon us ; a 
winter of woful discontent. Treason triumphed in many 
of the States of the North. The Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation, — a glad and glorious vision to holy hearts, — was sur- 
rounded by clouds and darkness, even like Him from whose 
chambers it had truly proceeded. The Mississippi was still 
fettered by stronger bands in its Southern windings than 
the icy ones nature had imposed on its upper currents. 



382 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

McClellan removed, Burnside defeated, Hooker defeated, 
Fremont cashiered, how thick the darkness, how faint the 
national heart ! 

Still her purpose failed not. Why ? It was the salva- 
tion of popular government. The Union must be preserved, 
not alone because it was essential to our own welfare, but 
because through its preservation would the divine doctrine 
of popular government live among men. If America is lost, 
the world is lost. 

Under this chastisement the people accept that other 
truth — the Identity of Man. God compels them to take 
this truth, just as very sick persons take very disagreeable 
draughts, not that they like the medicine, but that they may 
get well. Only this medicine of God is truly His best of 
food ; the choicest of His gifts to men as men. The Union 
is the American passion — a passion which no European 
appreciates. England sneers at it, and, if friendly, looks 
blank and ignorant at such enthusiasm. " Why this fury 
for the Union ? " " We have had one for two hundred and 
fifty years, and nobody on either side feels for it an impulse 
of enthusiasm or patriotic affection." "Why this talk about 
'our country'?" Country, to an Englishman, is simply the 
region not occupied by large cities. "The Times " acknowl- 
edges that it does not understand Mr. Beecher when he talks 
so much about "our country." An incident current in their 
drawing-rooms illustrates this remark. An American lady, 
who sought to conceal her American origin, as if ashamed 
of it, was charged in company with being an American. 
She reddened with shame and surprise. " Why do you 
make such an accusation?" she asked. " Because you said 
' our country.' No Englishman ever uses that expres- 
sion." 

But our passion for our country is also and chiefly a 
passion for liberty. We fight for empire, because empire 
means democracy. We shall wage this war fifty years, if 



BATTLE OF MISSIONAKY EIDGE. 383 

need be, because everybody, with more or less clearness, 
sees that its success is essential to the preservation of those 
ideas. It was not so at the first. Abolitionists, though 
sound on the rights of man, were, as a whole, unsound on 
the necessity of the Union to attain and maintain their rights. 
Different classes of the people were the depositary of differ- 
ent ideas. The one cried " Union at any cost. Down with 
the abolitionists who are disturbing it. Union is liberty. 
Union is democracy. Let it alone, even if it becomes the 
patron of slavery. Some way and some time it will emanci- 
pate the State from that iniquity. " The other party, with 
equal and superior fervor, cried, " The Rights of every man 
at any cost. Down with the Union, if it stands in the way 
of liberty." 

As in the material world, the orbit pursued is the result- 
ant of the forces employed upon the orb itself, so here. The 
centrifugal lovers of Liberty, and the centripetal lovers of 
Union, whose representatives were Phillips and Everett, 
were each at heart lovers of the democratic and federative 
ideas. Both sought their preservation. Both contended 
together, because each felt his own principle was in danger 
of destruction through the purpose of his antagonist's idea. 
The shock of arms united them. The one saw that Union 
now meant universal liberty. The other that abolitionism 
meant Union, and only under its banner could the nation be 
preserved. Equal rights were seen to mean every man's 
rights. Democracy was identical with abolitionism. Hence 
no men were more ardent to strike down the slave power 
than the life-long democrats, — democrats who were honest 
believers in the corner-stone of their creed — the equality of 
man. Dickinson of New York was such a democrat ; Butler 
of Massachusetts, another. They said instantly, " free the 
slave ; make him a soldier ; cut out the cancer over the 
heart of the republic.'" 

3. But a greater truth than all the rest was born of the 



384 THE WAK AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

exigencies of this hour. We found we as yet had known 
nothing, as it were, of the scope and fullness of that word 
Democracy. It was with us, at the worst, equality of white 
people, and the slavery of all other complexions ; at the 
best, equality of the whites, and the liberty, but not fraternity, 
of the blacks. Not the oneness of man as man, — never, 
never. We fell into spasms at the thought of that divine 
truth, as a mushroom lord of England might at his equality 
with his servant. 

But the wisdom of God is wiser than men. You did not 
create the doctrine of human fraternity. You may have 
fancied that you did ; that it was your patent, and could 
be limited and controlled at your pleasure. So did the 
Athenian democrats. Where are they ? So have the 
Southern slavemongers. Where are they ? God, my friends, 
not you, made man, of one father, that all might be brethren, 
that each should in honor prefer one another, esteeming 
others better than themselves. He is pushing us forward 
to His, not our, Millennium. He is using and blessing us 
if we choose to work with Him. If not, He is none the 
less using us, while also chastising, for the advancement 
of mankind to the same goal. He maketh our wrath or 
righteousness alike to praise and prosper Him. Whether 
gradually, and by the operation of laws that have been 
molding and transforming man for ages, or suddenly, and 
by the breaking up of the present order and institution of 
a new earth and new man, as some devout students of the 
Bible believe, whichever be the way, the end is sure and 
the same. The Millennium is a world of men, equal, 
brotherly, united, and holy. Every approach to that state 
now renders its violent introduction less necessary. If it 
can be effected by natural causes there will be no need of 
the supernatural. It is being effected. The divine doctrine 
of democracy has become choked with weeds and stones. 
We said "It is true and grand, but it is only for white folks. 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 385 

Do you dare to say that that negro and I are of one blood, 
and should be one in social and civil life ? that it is as much 
his duty to ignore my complexion as it is mine to ignore his? 
Horrible ! " And so we stone the prophets who simply preach 
to us our own doctrine of democracy, rationally and divinely 
developed. 

But God is taking vengeance on us for destroying His 
servants, and is compelling us to rise to the hights of our 
own principles at the threat of losing all its lower develop- 
ments, which we see to be our essential life. We listen, 
refuse, yield, and most reluctantly obey. 

Xow comes another word of God. Arm him as a soldier ? 
We refuse ; we scream in fear and hatred at that word. 
When Charles Sumner said, at the Massachusetts Republican 
Convention,* that such was the course of Marius to save 
Rome, and such must be ours to save the country, the 
journals of our capital denied the correctness of his quota- 
tions, and scouted with horror his proposals. To such a 
pitch of fear did they reach, that on carrying a defense of 
his scholarship — as if it could need defense — to the most 
learned of our journals, which had been severest in denun- 
ciation of his scholarship, I was told, after the article had 
spent a night in their editorial rooms, that if they should 
dare to publish that simple statement of the language of 
Plutarch, their building would be torn down before night. 
Another journal, "The Traveller/' to its honor be it said, 
admitted the article, and what was better, stood by the prin- 
ciple, without loss of building or character. 

Such opposition only new punishment could cure. So 
God sent our enemies again upon us. They ate up our 
boys as the ox eateth up grass. He develops demand for 
work at home to subdue the recruiting fever. He makes 
the draft unpopular and difficult. He wastes our armies, 
and shows that they cannot be replenished from their pre- 

nr * September, 1861. 



386 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

vious sources. At length, crushed with calamity and nigh 
the gates of the grave, we whiningly and meanly, yet hon- 
estly say, " Come, you nigger, and fight for us." He comes. 
Disregarding our hearts, mindful only of our danger, he 
comes and fights like well tried warriors ; fights so grandly 
that an officer at Port Hudson urged the appointment of 
white officers over them, because if led by their own men 
they would have certainly stormed those hights, and every 
man been slain. Whoever heard before that it was the busi- 
ness of an officer in battle to restrain the daring of 'his men. 

We are being led gradually to higher hights. Providence 
is using this degradation for the furtherance of His ends. 
What means the cry that has just made every heart bleed 
afresh. Our sons are starving in Richmond prisons ! Why 
not exchange them ? We cannot. Why not ? Because 
the rebels refuse to recognize the white officers of colored 
regiments as prisoners of war, and are putting our colored 
soldiers, whom they have taken captive, into slave-pens and 
worse than slave miseries. If we call these men to fight 
for us, we must, at least, protect them if captured, equally 
with their fellow-soldiers. There, at least, white and black 
are alike. The people are sad, but, thank God, are firm. 
They might not have been, had the rebels used those white 
officers as they do our other officers. They might have 
said, " Let the blacks be enslaved, but release my white sons 
by exchange for yours." God has made this trick of the 
devil a clasp of his own to bind us to our despised brethren. 

We must yet give these officers position. We must let 
them serve in what regiments they choose. We must let 
them rise in that regiment, if they are worthy, to the chief 
command. We must make them generals, not of black 
men, but of armies. This war, if greatly prolonged, will 
not close till this progress is wrought. It is not as great 
as has been achieved. It must be done to make our ways 
straight for the coming of the Lord. God will not rest 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 387 

until, either through this war, or by subsequent conflicts, 
which He shall create and control, He has abolished this 
iniquity from every institution and every heart. 

The last word of commendation which Mr. Beecher re- 
ceived in England was from the students of the non-con- 
forming colleges, the heirs of the blood, principles, and 
sovereignty of Cromwell and his associates. In that address 
they urge him to labor for the abolition of all distinctions 
in society based on color. It will be done, and we shall 
yet see in Baltimore, as in Boston, people of African descent 
moving freely in the best society. Africa is as good a 
country as Asia, whence we are supposed to have come, 
and its children will be held in as high an honor. 

Thus shall the millennial day break upon the world. It 
may be in a day. Events are hastening it forward. Every 
step in Europe is to emancipation, equalization, unification. 
There is no possibility of peace there on any other basis. 
Nor is there here. 

Christendom thus unified, heathendom and Islamdom 
will soon be regenerated. Social vices will abate their 
violence. Liberty and unity will prevent wars and arma- 
ments, royal houses, and luxurious absorption by a few fam- 
ilies of the people's wealth. Legitimate industry will pay 
the old debts of kings and crimes, and easily supply the 
slight demands of a popular and peaceful government. In- 
temperance, Sabbath-breaking, infidelity, all the fruits of 
crowned and Catholic Europe, will be replaced with the 
graces of Christianity. The Lord Jesus will be the real and 
recognized, if not visible, sovereign of the world. " Unto 
Him shall all flesh come, and every knee bow." By Him 
shall rulers reign, and judges decree justice. In Him shall 
all the world, consciously, happily, completely, live, and 
move, and have its being. 

" Yea, truth and justice then, 
Will down return to men, 



388 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

Orbed in a rainbow ; and, like glories wearing, 

Mercy will sit between, 

Throned in celestial sheen, 
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering, 

And heaven, as at some festival, 
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall." 

Say not this is all a golden dream. It is scriptural, ra- 
tional, inevitable. It is hardly now a prophetic vision, so 
much of it has been accomplished. The blindest-eyed can 
see, through the vista before him, the glad consummation. 
Compared with the dreary ages that are past, how brief, how 
pleasant the remnant hours ! Gigantic sins can be brought 
low as in a moment. Three years ago, and the most hopeful 
souls in America could see no immediate end to its most 
awful sin. Here and there was one who said the election 
of Mr. Lincoln begins the end. But this gave it nearly or 
over a score of years in which to die. The multitude saw 
not even those misty mountain tops. They looked over 
the immense territories ruled by the masters of these sins, 
and no glare of sunshine greeted their eyes. Wickedness 
stalked crowned, haughty, through all that land. 

" The free were only they 
Whom power made free to execute all ills 
Their hearts imagine ; they alone were great 
Whose passions nursed them from their cradle up 
• To luxury and lewdness — whom to see 
Was to despise — whose aspect put to scorn 
Their station's eminence. The wise, they only 
Obscurely waiting till the bolts of heaven 
Should break upon the land, and give them light 
Whereby to walk ! The innocent, alas ! 
Poor Innocency lay where four roads meet, 
A stone upon her head, a stake driven through her. 
Who that was innocent did care to live, 
The hand of power did press the very life 
Of Innocency out." 

That horrid shape, most said, can never die. For centu- 
ries, certainly, will it flourish. It arose in arms. How the 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 389 

whole land trembled at the neighing of its strong ones ! 
How we quailed and whitened at its imperial front ! Never 
before was a nation so despised by its rebels. No epithets 
could body forth their scorn. Egypt did not so disdain 
her Hebrew slaves, nor the Philistines, with Goliath at their 
head, the unarmed refugees of the cliffs of Judean wilder- 
nesses. They had bounds to their contempt. Not so our 
Southern masters. "Mudsills," "greasy mechanics/' whom 
" we can drive into the ocean with a lady's riding-whip," — 
these were the A B C of their scorn. They looked abroad, 
and every aristocrat was nodding and winking approval, 
chief of whom in this crime against God and humanity was 
the aristocracy of Great Britain. 

Our hopes were in our principles, our people, and our 
God. They have not failed us. And the hideous iniquity 
which we dared not touch, which we went round and round 
to get at those who, sheltered behind its Gorgon-headed 
shield, laughed us to scorn ; that Gorgon-hissing shield we 
at last struck at and struck through, and the monster lies 
prone for many a league, prone over half the land, prone 
forever. 

Coifi, a priest of British paganism, at the time of that 
island's conversion, and before its present backsliding, at 
the risk of death from the insulted gods, rode full tilt 
against their temples, before a ghastly crowd, who believed 
instant death would be visited upon a priest who should dare, 
armed, to approach these shrines, and were expecting that 
such would be his sudden fate. But, as the poet tells us, — 

" He crashed 
Through the inclosures, ever sacred held, 
And gained the central space unharmed, and rode 
Thrice round and round, and in his stirrup stood, 
And with a high defiance on his lip, 
Smote with a clang an Idol, monster faced ; 
E'en as he smote, the foul thing, reeling, fell, 
And then from every heart the icy hand 
Of fear was lifted. 



390 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

Within the crowd a saeted fury wrought ; 

The deities were tumbled on the grass, 

The pales and the inclosures were torn down, 

And one a torch applied, and towers 

Of flame rushed up, then licked the air and died, 

While white-robed priests, together standing, sung : 

' Down falls the wicked idol on his face — 

So let all wicked gods and idols fall.' " 

Thus have the fears of our monster idol been dispelled, 
and the demon that has burned to death screaming myriads 
in his arms of fire, has been smitten of God and tumbled into 
the lake of eternal burning, while we have stood amazed 
and glad beyond all power of praise. Its priestly devotees 
and lordly defenders are howling in sorrow and shame, de- 
feat and destruction. 

Let us not despair of further victories of the Lamb. This 
demon slain, there is no such other hydra cursing the earth. 
European tyrannies will fast follow it to its dishonored grave. 
Asiatic abominations and African savagery will feel the 
warm rays of the Sun of Righteousness, long held in disas- 
trous eclipse by this horrific sin. They will wilt down at 
His presence, as when the melting fire burnetii, the fire 
causeth the waters to boil. 

Our own social sins, intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, 
infidelity, immorality, will be more easily restrained and 
extirpated after this Satan among the lesser fiends is cast 
into the bottomless pit and chained there forever. Our 
prejudices, born and fostered of him, will likewise disappear, 
and brotherly love and unity possess all hearts. 

The glad tidings of yesterday assure the speedy over- 
throw of Pharaoh and his hosts. This great and growing 
soldier, with a rare fitness, joins his victories to our national 
holidays. They are thus twice blessed, in what they give 
to these rejoiceful days, in what of higher quality they take 
from their ancient worthiness, and add to their own high 
meed of fame. Vicksburg crowns the nation's birthday with 



BATTLE OF MISSIONARY EIDGE. 391 

an undying- glory, and Chattanooga, relieved of its long- 
exultant enemies, fills the most ancient of our festal days 
with the tides of exultant life. See that band creeping 
round the shaggy breast of yon sharp peak ; amid the blast- 
ed pines, the prostrate firs, the loose stones, their perilous 
path they keep, up and up, till a cloud receives them out 
of our sight. Not a cloud of heaven, but of earth, a cloud 
soon to flash with unwonted brightness, to rumble with 
thunder-claps of death. The battle opens, rages, grows 
closer, hotter, deadlier. Pressing ever on and up swing 
the gallant troops around the last smooth precipitous wall, 
that sits a crown of smooth, high rock upon the mountain's 
brow. The rebels break and flee ; along- the wild edge, head- 
long plunges the host. The fiery Hooker is fleeter of foot. 
Upon the plains beneath he breaks, like torrents into which 
the mountain cloud seems to have burst, torrents sweeping 
all things in their wild and fatal flight. 

Across the plains, on a low ridge, hangs a heavier cloud 
of war. It stretches for miles along its summit. In the 
valley below, with Chattanooga at its back, but a mile or 
two distant, on a little knob, stands a little man reconnoiter- 
ing the scene. The plains are filled with mustering squad- 
rons. Advances are made along the line up this bristling 
hill. Here Sherman holds his enemy by the throat, each 
bleeding, each firm. Then Thomas pushes forward his 
columns, and below Hooker sweeps up the less precipitous 
but more perilous sides, with his untamed daring. Day 
and day writhes the mighty anaconda of the plains, and the 
hills are wreathed in agony of strife. That point is reached 
at last which every great general knows, and only great 
generals, when, each side exhausted, that which summons 
all its strength crushes its foe. The word is given. The 
army summon up the spirits ; the hill is stormed, is swept, 
is ours. The rebels, who but now had thought themselves 
invulnerable, leap from their rifle-pits and intrenchments, 
and fly in panic irrepressible. 



392 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 

This is the thanksgiving- feast that the calm general sends 
to a nation drunken with delight. This crushes the dragon 
in all the region above the Gulf States, except that spot 
where he raises his head sparkling defiance from his green 
and deadly eyes. The West is free from slave or rebel, and 
shall be free forever. 

This victory assures the end. Slavery is doomed by the 
fiat of the nation and the arm of Grant. They have fought 
with the Lamb, and the Lamb has overcome them. No 
State, we fondly hope and believe, can ever resume its 
place in the Union with this crime on its hands. Other 
blessings shall speedily follow — all blessings. The glory 
of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the 
sea. Already its beams cover thick the morning sky. 

" Come forth, O Light, from out the breaking East, 
And with thy splendor pierce the heathen dark, 
And morning make a continent and isle, 
That Thou mayst reap the harvest of Thy tears, 
O Holy One, who hung upon the tree." 



WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED.* 



And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou 
dismayed ; take all the people of war with thee, and arise, 
go up to al : see, i have giyen into thy hand the king of al, 

AND HIS PEOPLE, AND HIS CITY, AND HIS LAND." — Joshua viii. 1. 




HE land trembles with the conflict that has been 
raging" for more than a week in the seat of the 
rebellion. The smoke of the great agony curls 
up in the central heavens, and almost casts its 
lurid darkness over our visible skies. Under its sulphurous 
canopy our sons and brothers have been wrestling in a death 
struggle with those who should be our sons and brothers, 
for principles and privileges that are dearer than life. We 
gather in this quiet house of prayer, far from the scene 
of the contest ; yet we hear but little save the rapid pelting 
of the musketry or the fearful boom of the artillery. Our 
ears are filled with the hurrahs of our boys as they fly up 
the steep sides of rebel earthworks, or the Indian yells of 
our foes, as they leap in mighty masses upon our serried 
columns. The piled dead lie before our vision, ghastly, 



* A sermon preached in Boston, Sunday, May 15, 1864, on the occa- 
sion of the advance of General Grant on Richmond. See Note XIV. 

(393) 



394 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

torn, trampled, their eyes glazed, or " staring in muddy im- 
purity/' The wounded, sinking, fainting, groaning, bleed- 
ing, fill our souls with inexpressible anguish. We see not 
each other's faces, we hear not each other's voices. These 
sights and sounds fill sense and soul to a staggering fullness. 

" The fires of death, 
The bale fires, flash on high ; from rock to rock, 
Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe ; 
Death rides upon the sulphury siroc ; 
Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock." 

Amid such powerful presences it is difficult for congre- 
gations to gather in churches to-day. Telegrams, not texts, 
are our spiritual food. The battle, not the Bible, draws our 
attention. The lives of myriads, nay, the life of the nation, 
hangs on the dreadful die. 

We do not condemn this feeling. Were one of your 
family to-day struggling with disease, and life or death 
hung trembling in the balance, you would not be a listener 
here. You would be busy in the chamber, nursing and 
praying. The quiet worship of God's house is sometimes 
more profane than the active worship of out-door philan- 
thropy. Should you, on coming hither, see a horse cast in 
the street, and say, "It is Sunday ; I cannot miss my seat 
and sermon to relieve this poor beast," you would find no 
spiritual nourishment in the service. God would scorn 
your advances. How much more, then, when your country 
is struggling for existence, when the principles of civil and 
Christian society are cast into the wavering scales of war, 
when the welfare of the living generation and unborn gen- 
erations is subjected to the risks of battle ; then, if ever, in 
every church and congregation, should prayers, meditations, 
and eloquence, all conspire for one end. Do you suppose, 
had Joshua's battle been on the Sabbath, that Eliezer and 
the Levites would have forbidden the non-combatants to 
think about their contending kindred on that day? Or that 



ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 395 

Phinehas would have told the worshipers at Shiloh, "Your 
brethren are having a terrible civil war down at Gibeah to- 
day, but you must think only of your sacrifices and ceremo- 
nial service." Nay ; he would have said, " Leave here thy 
gift before the altar, and let us hasten up to yonder hill, 
where perchance we may see the fearful strife. Let us 
earnestly pray for their success ; let us fly to the dreadful 
scene, and administer our aid and comfort to the wounded 
and dying.' 7 So now we may, we ought, to pray and talk 
on the all-absorbing theme. 

We are led hither, also, by the request of our Chief Magis- 
trate, who desires us to acknowledge the goodness of God 
in crowning our onward movement with victory. Especially 
should we consider this subject, that we may lift it above 
the bloody phases it presents to the natural eye, or the 
mere shifts and windings of politics that it exhibits to 
some minds, into the grand hights of divine workings. 
God moves with our moving army ; God fights with our 
fighting soldiers ; not for the welfare of America, as an 
especial and peculiar nation ; that, is a heathen's idea of 
God, who thought Jove or Zeus was his god only, and not 
the god of his enemy. He contends for us, because He 
has certain ends to be consummated on the earth, that can 
only be effected through the overthrow of the doctrines and 
usages of the rebellious confederacy. 

We may not see Him. Perhaps Joshua did not when he 
stole up the high wall of the Jordan valley, and through its 
passes wound his way to the long and lofty hill upon which 
Ai frowned contemptuously upon him. He knew that that 
city must be taken or the hill country of Palestine could 
not be occupied by his people. He knew that the narrow 
gorge of the Jordan would soon cease to contain them, if 
they failed to gain a foothold upon the hights. It was a 
military necessity. It was an absolute necessity. He saw 
not that his success involved even the redemption of man. 



396 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

He did not fully know that out of it would come salvation 
for the world. Even though this inspiring- vision did lift 
itself before his eyes, yet he felt none the less that his work 
was to deliver a nation of fugitives from destruction, and 
establish them upon immovable foundations. As in all 
greatest duties, there was the vision of future perfection, 
and the present obligation, hard, painful, bloody. 

" God has conceded two sights to a man — 

One of men's whole work, time's completed plan, 
The other of the minute's work, man's first 
Step to the plan's completeness." 

So Joshua might have seen the infinite necessities that 
compelled the capture of the hostile town ; but the strong, 
hard duty of the hour was its capture. We, too, looking 
over the bloody and blackened field of wasting strife, look- 
ing at the yet unsettled, and perhaps most desperate future, 
may rightfully inspire our hearts, as was that of Joshua, 
with visions of the plans of God that necessitate our victory. 

This last and greatest ground for our assurance of success 
covers the final issue. Others, like those that pressed im- 
mediately upon the mind of the Hebrew captain, press upon 
us. The future of revelation may be near or distant — 
dim or clear. In it America may appear shining with a 
celestial glory, or may be blotted out as completely and 
indifferently as are Egypt, Assyria, and Rome, or may shine 
in as baleful light as Judea, whose central principles and 
Person, like that nation, it may have scornfully rejected. 

Whatever be that ultimate summing up of God concern- 
ing this nation, depends upon the manner in which we re- 
spond to His calls at the present moment. 

It is often said that we are settling the question for the 
rights of man in America and in the world. We are not 
doing exactly this. For the question of the success of the 
rights of man does not depend upon America, but upon 
God. If we follow His orders we may be His favorites — 



ADVANCE ON KICHMOND. 397 

the ministers of this divine purpose. If we fail to follow 
them, we shall be cast aside as unceremoniously as we have 
cast aside disobedient or incompetent generals, and He will 
make others His officers, servants, and friends. So, then, 
we are led, in considering our grounds for hoping to succeed, 
solely to the consideration of the manner in which we have 
responded to the demands of God. We have no political 
or merely military problems to discuss. We trace our de- 
feats and victories to no incompetent or competent general- 
ship. A higher law regulates these matters. Not that we 
despise generalship. Not that we believe victory usually 
follows virtuous imbecility and defeat vicious ability. Suc- 
cess requires sagacity, even in the way of righteousness. 
Folly is not God's favorite. Moses was as naturally as he 
was supernaturally gifted. David was of extraordinary 
powers independent of their extraordinary subjugation to 
the divine will. Paul was the acknowledged leader of the 
Jewish leaders before he became the head of the Christian 
Church. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, were men of the amplest 
parts, independent of the lofty purpose in which they em- 
ployed their genius. 

And yet the wisest of minds set against the will of God 
is weaker than the weakest working with that will. The 
mightiest steamer tugs in vain against Niagara's current, 
the tiniest feather flies resistlessly upon its rushing floods. 
So, in estimating the reasons for our success, we shall ever 
bear in mind that though great generals are a great neces- 
sity, great ideas are a greater. Joshua was a great general. 
No superior appears in Hebrew, if in any other history. 
Yet at the very beginning of his campaign he meets with 
an ignominious repulse. He is chased down the mountains 
of Bethel a ruinous rout. • Why ? He had ceased to ally 
himself with God. He was but a lieutenant of the Divine 
Captain. He was not in unison with his commander-in-chief. 
He flies as miserably as the weakest of his soldiers before 



398 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

the impetuous mouutaiueers — the avowed rebels of the 
cause which he was tamely supporting. So the eleven tribes 
— for the clerical tribe cooperated largely in the patriotic 
and holy enterprise — fled twice in utter disgrace and con- 
fusion before their corrupt and abominable brethren of Ben- 
jamin and Gibeah. They had as good leaders, doubtless. 
But they were not in earnest against the sin of their breth- 
ren. They took up the quarrel compulsorily, and not seri- 
ously — fearing for their Constitution more than for their 
God, and He drove them down the rocky slope and across the 
broad meadows at its base in unspeakable panic, until they 
had began to fast, and repent, and search their souls, and 
seek for God's way before they expected any victory. 

In the light of this high principle we see why we did 
not succeed at the first. We had become almost as deeply 
implicated in the sin of the nation as our revolting brethren. 
We refused to let the cry of the slave rouse us from our 
torpidity ; even after the shot at a national vessel and the 
capture of a national fort had stung us into a war for na- 
tional self-preservation, we still vociferated at the top of our 
lungs, " War for union, not for liberty — for white men, not 
for man — for the Constitution, not for the right." So we 
rushed to Washington — bravely, no doubt, as did Joshua's 
men up the sides of Ai; yet vain-gloriously, godlessly, pro- 
fanely — stuffed with hate, and prejudice, and all unclean- 
ness. Then came Big Bethel, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, with 
their chastening experiences. But they did not chasten us. 
The leaven began to work, yet wrought slowly, slowly. A 
young Napoleon came down from the Alleghanies, and was 
going to conquer without God ; nay, against God. His 
army lies around him, superb in equipment, gay in capari- 
son, matchless on parade, encumbered with material which 
a lavish nation squandered upon them. He wanted to con- 
quer. Everybody does. He wanted to substantiate the 
fame which danced before him. But he said, " I must be 



ADVANCE ON EICHMOND. 399 

the victor of a people united on the old basis — slavery must 
go out gradually — not by my right arm." He did not like 
it, did not approve it. He wished its death. But he would 
not touch it. It was the sacred Hyena before which we 
bowed in adoration — which at least we would keep care- 
fully pastured and folded — not caged exactly — for though 
inclosed in bars, he had wide ranging-ground and ample 
privilege to eat men, women, and children by the million. 

One event, like Achan's little wedge, showed the rotten- 
ness of that army, and the certainty of its fate. God sent 
two or three sweet singers into the winter's camp, to be- 
guile a lonely hour of the soldiers with their melodies. They 
were honest singers. Not such as black their faces, and 
travesty all sincere and truthful things to beguile bewitched 
ears of their money and their time, but men that feared 
God, and would sing, as did Miriam, and Deborah, and Da- 
vid, the songs He taught them. They essayed to sing the 
grandest hymn of the war ; solemn and stately as the oracles 
of heaven. You know its deep pathos. 

" We wait beneath the furnace blast 
The pangs of transformation ; 
Not painlessly doth God recast 
And mould anew the nation ; 

Hot burns the fire 

Where wrongs expire, 

Nor spares the hand, 

That from the land 

Uproots the ancient evil. 

"What gives the wheat-fields blades of steel? 
What points the rebel cannon ? 
What sets the roaring rabble's heel 
On the old star-spangled pennon? 

What breaks the oath 

Of the men o' the South? 

What whets the knife 

For the Union's life ? 

Hark to the answer — Slavery ! 



400 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

" Then waste no blows on lesser foes, 
In strife, unworthy freemen ; 
God lifts to-day the vail, and shows 
The features of the demon ! 

O, North and South, 

Its victims both, 

Can ye not cry, 

Let Slavery die, 

And Union find in Freedom? " 

That hymn the soldiers were forbidden to hear. From 
that hour dated the disasters of the Peninsula, and the dis- 
grace of to-day ; while the general who was the mouth- 
piece of his commander in that crowd has lately crowned 
his practical treason at Manassas with complete defeat at 
Shreveport. Then God left us to the pride that goeth be- 
fore destruction, and the haughty spirit that precedes the 
fall. He went not with us into that campaign. Miserable 
destruction overwhelmed us. 

And yet, as if to show how clear was His line of action, 
there was going forward at that very time another movement 
on His basis. A general who had started out determined 
to conquer — but hoping to do it without touching the great 
iniquity, who had offered to protect the slaveholders of 
Maryland against the fugacious losses of their human prop- 
erty — had been whelmed in disgrace and defeat at Big 
Bethel. Unlike every other defeated man, he instantly saw 
that if he would win he must be true to truth. And he was 
as instantly and as thoroughly converted. He goes to 
New Orleans in the power of that conversion. Its forts fall 
before him, as did Jericho before Joshua. He ruled that 
great city in justice. He decreed liberty ; gave the freed- 
man a uniform, long before Massachusetts wrung from a 
defeated government the privilege to organize her now 
famous " Fifty-Fourth." He did what the government has 
not yet done — put men of color in command of the regi- 
ments he raised. Success throngs to him ; he rises be- 



ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 401 

fore the nation, before his foes, before the world, — the man 
who has done more than all others to really save the coun- 
try. He alone of the generals who were first appointed to 
lead the assault upon the rebel Capitol is to-day in the field, 
and under the gates of the city. And he to-day stands so 
strong in the judgment and conscience of his countrymen, 
that should he be defeated by superior forces, or superior 
military scholarship, he would suffer no real loss in their 
hearts. They know that he means to be right. He may 
not know all about war. He knows that which is of more 
worth. He may have been a blasphemer, a persecutor. So 
was Paul. But in this matter, if in no other, he is true. 

We did not succeed, notwithstanding the light that shone 
at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the government refused to 
speak the word of Liberty, and destruction came. That word 
appeared, and light broke dimly over the black and madden- 
ing waves. The waves still roared, and were troubled. The 
mountains shook with the swelling thereof. But a new 
creating spirit was brooding upon its turbulent depths. The 
influences of regeneration moved through the seething mass. 
The enemy arose and defeated the idea at the polls. It raged 
again in mobs and massacre ; it was savage, unrelenting. 
The kings of the earth took counsel together against us. 
All that passed by wagged their heads, exclaiming, — 

" She has gone down, our evil-boding star, 
Beneath a hideous cloud of civil war, 
Strife such as heathen slaughterers abhorred, 
The lawless band who would call no man lord, 
In the fierce splendor of her insolent morn, 
She has gone down — the world's eternal scorn." 

It was too late — that hate and scorning. She had begun 
to live. But not yet was she deserving success. The slave 
is freed by compulsion, not by love. Not honestly, but 
meanly, did we 

" Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame : " 
26 



402 WHY GEANT WILL SUCCEED. 

blushed with a real sense of shame. We disliked our col- 
ored fellow-men. We hated to call them truly brethren. 
They must not enter our armies, they must not stay in our 
borders. We will free them, and expatriate them. There- 
fore successes come slowly. The waters dash against the 
light, and almost obliterate it. Burnside moves out only to 
be miserably defeated. Hooker takes up the gage of battle, 
and with a larger army than the one that is now sweeping 
down to Richmond, is completely destroyed in the Wilder- 
ness. Flushed with success, and welcomed by bloody in- 
surrections and secret machinations, the foe moves down 
upon us out from its fastnesses. Wasting and destruction 
are in all our borders. He is barely repulsed. We sit down 
before him, unable to take Ai or Gibeah, unable to get anear it. 

Meantime in the West is another general, who believes 
in ideas no less than arms ; who sees and accepts the call 
of God. As little and unknown as David among his flocks, 
he would have remained unknown but for that God saw his 
heart was simple, right, and true. Being thus, he clothed 
him with power, and the West stood disinthralled from the 
fetters of the rebellion. God's gift for our partial service 
was the freely flowing Mississippi. His punishment for our 
yet Egyptian longings and rebellions of spirit was Freder- 
icksburg, Chancellorsville, and the invasion of Pennsylvania. 

But we grow in righteousness. The spirit of the people 
is becoming penitent and sincere. We see that not only is 
slavery wrong, — caste is wrong-. It is abominable in the 
sight of God for man to look with loathing upon his fellow- 
man. He made us all alike — all of one blood, all brothers 
and sisters, as close as those born of the same father and 
mother. We are not yet cured of that iniquity, though we 
are advancing thitherward. We put them into our ranks. 
In one or two instances we conferred on them commis- 
sions. Still we held them in the servants' place and at 
servants' wages. That brings disaster, Fort Pillow, Plym- 



ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 403 

outh, Shreveport. The campaign opens most dismally. 
The government pompously refuses to raise their wages, 
and shoots one who asserts, and justly, that he was enlisted 
under false pretences on the part of the government, and 
that it has no claim upon his services. Mutiny mutters 
through all the army. 

Had Grant moved upon Richmond with that iniquity un- 
removed, he would be to-day a disgraced and ruined man. 
We call him a great general, and so he is ; but his general- 
ship could not have saved him. God would have given him 
into the hands of his enemies, as He has given another at 
New Orleans, whose reputation has been hardly less than 
his ; but who defrauded the freedman of his right to nego- 
tiate his own terms for labor ; who compelled him to receive 
the pittance that secession land-owners proposed to give, 
and forbade his being paid but half of that before the close 
of the year; who shut him up on the plantations, and forbade 
his crossing the boundaries without a pass — the hideous 
reminder of his old condition ; who stripped the epaulets 
from the shoulders of wealthy gentlemen, that had won them 
by their valor, simply because they were slightly tinged with 
a browner complexion than his own; who disfranchised two 
thirds of the Union men of the State, and compelled the 
election of a rebel in heart over an honest lover of union, 
liberty, and the rights of man. And then, having inaugu- 
rated with a monster concert from one who had desecrated 
Puritan Massachusetts with his Sabbath amusements, his 
new, false, and unjust government, he moves out to subdue 
his foes, and is dashed back upon his capital, like a weed 
torn up by the sea, and hurled on the rocks. As a Presi- 
dential candidate, 

' ' He falls like Lucifer 
Never to hope again." 

And this man was one of the ablest minds in the land ; 
the pet of his commonwealth ; the hope and pride of the 



404 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

nation. What has killed him ? God. He set himself 
against the Almighty. He scorned the doctrine that there 
was sentiment in politics ; that soul should appear in govern- 
ment. He is dashed to pieces. All is gone. Honor, fame, 
hopes, and more than all, a good conscience. Never was 
there a fall in this nation so sudden and so irremediable. 
And why ? Not because he lacked generalship. Other 
generals have failed. He lacked principle. His fate is a 
warning — a painful, dreadful warning to every man. Sooner 
or later, in such hours as this, everything short of truth and 
justice is burned up, and every one who makes these idols 
his trust is burned with them. "The strong shall be as 
tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both 
burn together, and none shall quench them.' 7 

So, too, would our chief army have perished, but for 
timely repentance and its meet works. The President de- 
clares for ten months that he has no power to treat colored 
soldiers as soldiers. All at once, fearful lest Congress will 
not give him, in time for the advance, the power that he 
has said he did not have, his attorney general informs him 
that the original bill granted him this power. Could he not 
have found that out before ten months of disastrous trial 
had opened his eyes ? 

Then inarches the new army to battle, with colored soldiers 
as soldiers ; with colored cavalry sweeping up to the gates 
of the rebel capital. And then and therefore comes the 
victory. That is why we shall succeed. Our men are con- 
verted to the truth. They treat their associates in arms as 
their equals, their friends. They march together, fight to- 
gether, bleed together, shout together, die together, triumph 
together, — brothers in blood and brothers forever. 

How must the trembling sinners of Richmond look aghast 
as they see the dark faces of their slaves riding insolently 
up to their walls. Nemesis, shod not now in wool, but 
with fire, is marching upon them. She brings the death of 



ADVANCE ON EICHMOND. 405 

their pride, their power, their all. Their end is coming. 
"Go up," says God; "for I have given them into thy hand." 

But this success will avail us nothing- unless we purge 
ourselves of the least and last remains of this iniquity. 
We must put away from us the unclean thing. Not those 
we call unclean, but our prejudices, far more unclean and 
abominable in the sight of God. Your soul, not your neigh- 
bor's color, your God hateth. We must abolish colored 
regiments, colored conferences, colored churches, colored 
pews, and colored distinctions in everything. Our full sal- 
vation depends on our faithfulness to this duty. 

For, my friends, be assured God cares but very little for 
you unless you will aid Him in carrying out His designs on 
the earth. To that design if America is willing to contrib- 
ute, well for her ; if not, she is broken in pieces as a pot- 
ter's vessel. That design is the brotherhood of man in 
Christ. If we cooperate with Him, He will make us His 
vanguard. If we refuse, He will do with us as He did with 
His more chosen and more beloved people — cast us off, and 
raise up another people who shall follow His guidance. 

The world looks to us to obey His commands ; to expel 
from our hearts the accursed thing; to lock foot and heart 
with these our brethren, for a courageous march across the 
world. Europe hangs on the destiny of this hour. If we 
come out of this struggle clear and glorious, if a man irre- 
proachably just and fearless shall lead this nation out of 
its slime and sin, then the hundredth anniversary of our 
Independence will not see a throne in Europe, so ripe is that 
continent for liberty. 

May God help us so to go on to perfection, that with the 
certain fall of the stronghold and strong arms of the rebel- 
lion before our Joshua, there shall be a more perfect down- 
fall and destruction of the stronger holds of false and fatal 
pride, that have so long ruled and ruined our souls. 

Then, fearful as are our calamities, distressful as is the 



406 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 

fate of many wounded heroes, and riven and bleeding hearts, 
we shall feel that their tears and blood are not shed in vain. 
As the blood of brave Hebrews won the citadels of the 
hills from heathen foes, and made them the fair and chosen 
seats of the Lord for a thousand years, so will these sacred 
gifts secure for us generations of peace and joy. 

" God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 
Shall rise at last." 

And in those ages to come, when that temple shall stand 
complete, no honors too great can be paid to our memory. 
The world's feet will pass by the tomb of the great Wash- 
ington, to pause at the mounds where his children, with 
superior heroism, poured forth their blood to preserve and to 
perfect the blessings he partially secured. Throughout all 
nations shall strong men weep for gratitude over their un- 
speakable valor, and all the world, Asian, European, African, 
American, with one united and unceasing impulse, in a 
regenerated and fraternal brotherhood of man, shall rise up 
and call us blessed. 

"Triumph not, fools, and weep not, ye faint-hearted. 
Have ye believed that the divine decree 
Of Heaven had given this people o'er to perish? 
Have ye believed that God would cease to cherish 
This great new world of Christian liberty? 
And that our light forever had departed? 
Nay, by the precious blood shed to redeem 
The nation from its selfishness and sin, 
By each true heart that burst in holy strife, 
Leaving its kindred hearts to break through life; 
By all the tears that will not cease to stream 
Eorever, every desolate home within, 
We will return to our appointed place, 
Eirst in the vanguard of the human race." 




THREE SUMMERS OF WAR.* 

THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 

" Whose are the fathers." — Romans ix. 5. 

E have just slowly waded through the third sum- 
mer of blood. Tfre waves still roar and are 
troubled. The mountains shake with the swell- 
ing thereof. It is well in such an hour to 
strengthen our souls with the experience of our fathers. 
The third year of our revolutionary struggle may be proper- 
ly placed beside the third year of our war. They were 
waged for the same ends, by the same people, against the 
same pretensions. Our foe, like that of our fathers, speak 
our language ; like that, seek our annihilation as a nation in 
the interests of slavery and despotism. Our fortunes merit 
and will reward comparison. The analogy naturally resolves 
itself into the military, the moral, and the financial. 

1 . In a military view, if we take our stand at Philadelphia, 
July 4, 1*776, and look over the country which had just been 
declared free and independent, we see not an armed enemy 
in all its borders. Four months before they had been ex- 



A sermon preached in Boston, July 4, 1864. 



(407) 



408 THEEE SUMMERS OE WAR. 

pelled from Boston. The nation was seemingly master of 
the whole land. Yet they were far from being its undis- 
puted possessors. Though Britain was ousted, she was 
rapidly entering. On that very day the white sails of her 
army-laden navy, moving down from Halifax, were off 
Staten Island. The troops soon occupied its shores, and 
New York was a beleageured town. On the 27th of August 
their Bull Run occurred at Brooklyn. Two weeks later 
there was a second panic at Harlem, when Washington 
vainly attempted to keep his men in front of the enemy, and 
exclaimed in dismay, " Are these the men with whom I am 
to defend America ? " 

So great was the depression of the public mind by that 
disastrous defeat, that Washing-ton, in a letter to the pres- 
ident of Congress, dated the 2d of September, writes in 
almost a state of despair. "The check," he says, "that 
our detachment sustained on the 27th ult. has dispirited 
too great a proportion of our troops, and filled their minds 
with apprehension and despair. The militia, instead of 
calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly op- 
position in order to repair our losses, are dismayed, intract- 
able, and impatient to return. Great numbers of them have 
gone off ; in some instances almost by whole regiments." 
The British were as jubilant and hopeful as the rebels at 
Manassas ; while, to complete the analogy, General McClellan 
appears on the stage in the person of General Lee (ominous 
conjunction) as the dreamed-of deliverer, while the defeated 
Washington is despised, if not rejected. An American 
officer in the camp writes to a friend, " General Lee is hour- 
ly expected, as if from heaven." He had had some minor 
successes at the South, like our then favorite, and was 
looked upon for more than two years by many patriots as 
our only savior. 

We were soon driven from New York, and the American 
cause would have perished that year but for the brilliant 



THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION 409 

raids of Washington at Trenton and Princeton. The next 
spring he was driven from Philadelphia, after the two fatal 
fields of Brandywine and Germantown. The campaign was 
redeemed only by the capture of Burgoyne, in which Wash- 
ington gained nothing, and Gates everything. 

The terrible winter of Valley Forge settles down as a 
shroud over the handful of bleeding and starving soldiery. 
The French alliance alone relieves the dismal prospect. The 
arrival of a French fleet the next spring at the mouth of the 
Delaware compels the British evacuation of Philadelphia. 
Washington pursues and fights the drawn battle of Mon- 
mouth. In fact, no decisive victory in open combat ever 
crowned his arms. The triumphs of Greene and Gates were 
added to his other troubles. 

Thus stood affairs in the summer of lit 8. Burgoyne 
defeated, the French alliance effected ; only these. The 
following year was one of unvarying disaster. We at- 
tempted to take Newport, in conjunction with the French 
fleet, and failed. New Bedford was burned, and the adjacent 
country laid waste. The coast of New Jersey was similarly 
ravaged, and a body of infantry, under Pulaski, was sur- 
prised and bayoneted, after the fashion faithfully followed at 
Fort Pillow. The winter saw Savannah and Charleston, 
with the whole country south of Virginia, fall into the hands 
of the enemy. Norfolk and Portsmouth were burned, and 
property to* the amount of two millions of dollars destroyed. 
New Haven and the Connecticut coast were sacked. Wash- 
ington with a little force was cooped up in the Highlands, 
incapable of relieving the ravaged sea-coast, or of descend- 
ing upon New York, and avenging the insults on the head 
of the enemy. Thus stood the military situation at the end 
of three years. A ragged, mutinous corps was all that were 
between the country and its subjugation. They were power- 
less to assail or to defend. The capture of Stony Point, 
ten days afterward, was almost instantly followed by its 



410 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 

abandonment, so difficult did Washington find it, before 

Wordsworth, — 

"To keep 
Heights which his soul was competent to gain." 

Compare this condition of affairs with ours in the same 
space of time. 

Every post south of the Potomac and the Ohio, at the be- 
ginning", was in the hands of the rebels ; the whole of Kentucky, 
of Missouri outside of St. Louis, of Virginia, West and East, 
of the Mississippi below Cairo. The Eelay House was our 
advance post. Three years have passed, and where are we? 
Swept back in terror from our first field, we have steadily 
gained ground. Western Virginia is ours, and the most of 
Eastern ; Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, most 
of Mississippi, portions of Louisiana, including the metrop- 
olis of the Gulf, Northern Alabama, and Georgia, the edge 
of Florida and South Carolina. The lines of the rebellion 
are pressed back in their center from the Ohio almost to the 
Gulf. 

The Mississippi has been stripped of its batteries. No 
frowning forts prevent commerce. Its capital receives 
Massachusetts principle from a Massachusetts governor. 
Their second city, Nashville, second to none in its pride of 
place, is ruled by the candidate of the friends of union and 
liberty for the second office in the gift of the nation. The 
foe is penned up in Charleston, Richmond, Atlanta, and 
Mobile, except the few that ravage the plains of Texas. 
All of these are under investment. Charleston is half 
consumed, and Richmond threatened by the national 
cannon. 

We are not compelled, as was Washington, simply to 
repel assaults on our intrenchments. Our troops celebrated 
their last 4th of July, not as they did the one before, in 
victories won on Northern soil, but in the very center of 
the rebellion, with their hand at its throat and their foot on 



THE EEVOLUTION AND THE KEBELLION. 411 

its heart. Richmond and Atlanta, the two foci of the blazing 

comet that 

' ; From his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilence and war," 

are within the guns and the grasp of our armies. How 
superior are our successes to those our fathers had won in 
the same space of time ! 

2. The moral victories are not less striking, nor is the 
comparison of the two wars in the progress of their ideas 
less valuable. The Declaration was thought premature by 
many friends of the cause, as has been its twin brother, the 
Proclamation. At the first ballot in Congress, June 8, only 
seven States out of the thirteen voted in its favor. Introduced 
by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and seconded by John 
Adams of Massachusetts, it was opposed by Dickinson and 
Wilson of Pennsylvania, Robert R. Livingston of New 
York, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, not because 
it was wrong, but premature. July 1, it was opposed by 
four States, and was finally carried, with New York silent, 
but hostile. There was a like division of sentiment out- 
side of Congress. 

Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation has provoked far less bitter- 
ness among the friends of the Union than did the Declara- 
tion ; yet we find that two years later, when British com- 
missioners appeared in New York, and sought to beguile 
us from our steadfastness, they were unanimously, and 
even contemptuously, repulsed. It was then that the offer 
of ten thousand pounds and a high office to Dr. Rush drew 
from him the famous reply, " I am not worth purchasing, 
but such as I am, the king of England is not rich enough to 
buy me." They declare that Great Britain has granted all 
the colonists originally demanded, appeal to the colonial 
government against Congress, seek to stir up Protestant 
and Puritan prejudices by calling the French allies Papists, 
entreat the lovers of peace not to let the ambition of a few 



412 THREE SUMMERS OE THE WAR. 

members of Congress ruin their whole people, and threaten 
increased chastisement if their offers are rejected. 

All their efforts were vain. Congress coolly publishes 
their appeal in the public journals, and treats them with 
confident disdain. So great had grown the public sentiment 
in these two years of most moderate success. 

In other respects the public conscience had not grown. 
Though the war was waged professedly for the rights of 
man, they still failed to see the iniquity of slavery. In no 
instance did a state decree emancipation, and summon its 
slaves to its banners. These were treated usually as they are 
by the rebels to-day — made useful in the camp, sometimes 
in the field, but with no idea of granting them their rights 
as equals. In the third summer of the war, 11 T9, a body 
of soldiers, having captured some slaves with a British Out- 
post on Lake Erie, sold them for five hundred pounds, and 
divided the money as booty. To-day, our soldiers, making 
such a capture, would put arms in their hands, and welcome 
them to their side as brethren. 

But as they progressed rapidly in their main idea of 
independence, so have we in ours of liberty and union. It 
is doubtful if, in the winter of 1860—61, one man in a thou- 
sand believed in a free and united nation. The South was 
defiant, the North indifferent. If the Union stood, it seemed 
evident that it would be only as the tool of the slave power. 
Now, the men who believe in its dissolution are as few or as 
powerless as those who then believed in its salvation; while 
through the South, in a multitude of places, are its numer- 
ous, fearless, and tireless friends that then were gagged by 
the mailed hand of secession. 

So also — and herein we augur the best of results — the 
public conscience has grown more rapidly than the public 
resolution. When the war broke out, how deep was our 
detestation of the negro ! how feeble our hatred of slavery ! 
Probably three fourths of the three months' soldiers were far 



THE EEVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 413 

better haters of the cause of freedom than slavery. They 
went not chiefly as volunteers, but because they were 
members of already organized regiments. The first regi- 
ments of volunteers were of a far different composition, 
though even these grew slowly in the faith. Yet they grew. 
Negro soldiers, but a year ago, marching through the streets 
of Boston, amazed the whole land ; now they are as un- 
noticed as their white brethren in Baltimore, and even 
march, though fortunately for their foes, as prisoners and 
without arms through the streets of Richmond, exciting un- 
speakable terror even in this unsubstantial military form in 
their Macbeth murderers. They have won their way to the 
front ; they will yet to commissions and commands. All 
honors await patient and steadfast souls. 

Meanwhile elsewhere the renewal of the land goes for- 
ward. Congress has abolished all its fugitive slave law 
iniquities, including that which George Washington signed 
and Josiah Quincy resisted. It has also abolished dis- 
tinctions of color in the cars of the capital, opens the courts 
to their testimony and their rights as appellants — com- 
pelling Judge Taney, we trust, ere he shall vacate his seat, 
to respect many a right where he declared none existed. It 
prohibits slavery in the Territories, and almost secured 
universal suffrage there, and the abolishment of slavery in 
all the land. Maryland accepts the ordinance of 1*781 at 
the same time that Congress abolishes that of 1793. 

Thus in our ideas we have advanced as rapidly as our 
fathers did in theirs. They waxed strong in independence 
amid the storms of disaster and death. So have we in our 
equally great idea of union, and far greater one of liberty. 

3. The financial question is of far less importance than 
that of ideas or arms. We could afford to sacrifice all our 
business and all our wealth so that we should preserve un- 
weakened our national boundaries and political principles. 
Yet in this field we have great ground for gratulation. 



414 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAB. 

Many are affrighted at the value of gold and the deprecia- 
tion of the currency. They may find encouragement in the 
history of their fathers. 

The issues of paper began with the issue of the Declara- 
tion. In eighteen months it amounted to twenty millions 
of dollars of Continental currency, besides large colonial 
issues. Thus far there had been no depreciation. In this 
they were our superiors as financiers, for our gold remained 
at par a year only after the war began. Their decline, how- 
ever, was much more rapid. Loaus, lotteries, and other 
devices were tried, but without success. Xew bills of 
credit must be issued ; they were refused by the people. 
Congress declared that they " ought to pass current, and be 
deemed equal to the same nominal sums in Spanish dollars, 7 ' 
and that " all who refused to take them should be considered 
enemies of the United States." But still their best friends 
declined to receive their currency as equivalent to silver. 
The States were called upon to make this refusal penal, but 
declined. They were urged to tax their people, but also 
refused. Again appear the Continental greenbacks. Sixty- 
three and one half millions were issued in IT 78, making the 
total to that date over a hundred millions of dollars. By 
the 4th of July, 1779, they had reached one hundred and 
sixty millions of dollars. The dollar went down to five 
cents. The loans and foreign debt were only thirty-seven 
millions and a half. A riot broke out in Philadelphia while 
Congress was in session in consequence of this disastrous 
condition of affairs. At the end of the year the issue had 
reached two hundred millions, and the value, three cents* 

Thus stood, or rather thus fell, at the end of three years, the 
finances of the Eevolution. There was a deep beyond this 
lowest deep, whither they plunged before the paper Declara- 
tion of 1776 became a living reality. How do our three 
years of conflict compare with these ? Our loans are 
nogotiated readily, our interest paid in gold steadily. Our 

* See Note XY. 



THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 415 

currency has reached six hundred millions, or, with the local 
issues, eight hundred millions ; not thrice the amount of 
theirs. Two dollars and a half, not thirty dollars, can buy a 
Spanish dollar. Our real estate and other property, which 
was estimated at more than sixteen thousand millions in 
1860, has not decreased in value. In this most tremulous 
of all the nerves of society there is unspeakably less agitation 
than in the days when Jay brooded, like Chase and Fes- 
senden, over this question of finance, and Congress wore 
anxious brows in their painful and ineffectual deliberations. 
The results of this state of the finances were not unlike 
what prevail to-day. The extravagance and seeming abun- 
dance of these times obtained then. " If I were called upon 
to draw a picture of the times and the men," says Washing- 
ton, in a letter to Colonel Harrison, the father of the future 
president, dated December 30, IT 18, " from what I have 
heard and seen, and in part know, I should in one word say 
that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have 
laid fast hold of most of them ; that speculation, peculation, 
and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better 
of every other consideration, and almost of every order of 
men ; that party disputes and personal quarrels are the 
great business of the day, while the momentous concerns of 
an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, 
depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its con- 
sequences is want of everything, are but secondary con- 
siderations. " At Philadelphia he saw and lamented the 
folly and extravagance of the people, " spending three and 
four hundred pounds for an assembly, a concert, a dinner, a 
supper, while the great part of the officers of the army, 
from absolute necessity, were quitting the service, and the 
more virtuous few, rather than do this, were sinking by sure 
degrees to beggary and want." "Meantime," says Irving, 
"it was hard to recruit the armies. There was abundance 
of employment, wages were high, the value of money low, 



416 THEEE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 

consequently there was but little temptation to enlist." 
How aptly do these times mirror forth the same image ! 
Washington, too, found contractors his bane. He calls 
them "the murderers of our cause," and exclaims, "I 
would to God some one of the more atrocious in each State, 
was hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as 
the one prepared for Haman. No punishment, in my opin- 
ion, is too severe for the man who can build his greatness 
on his country's ruin." He would have deemed Forts 
Warren and Lafayette slight repayal for our modern plun- 
derers. The rise of " shoddy " was more marked, and its 
sway more perfect, than in this day. Says Hildreth, "In 
place of the old mercantile interest, almost annihilated by 
the Revolution, a new money interest had sprung into exist- 
ence since the war, and as the resources of Congress and 
the States diminished with the rapid decline of public credit, 
began to exercise a constantly increasing influence over 
American affairs. Sudden fortunes had been acquired by 
privateering, by rise in the prices of foreign goods, by the 
sutlers who followed the camp, and by others who knew how 
to make money out of the great public expenditure. It was 
remarked that while the honest and patriotic were impover- 
ished, rogues and Tories were fast growing- rich." 

They had no stocks in those days, and so put lotteries in 
their place — a fitting substitute.* 

* In this matter of finance we are following precisely the experience 
of England in her attempts to ruin Napoleon. " For eighteen years she 
suspended specie payments in her desperate struggle with France. Bank 
of England notes were made, in effect, a ' legal tender,' by every person 
being protected from arrest who offered them in payment of a debt, and 
by the bank being guarded by law from any suit for non-payment of its 
notes. For eighteen years there was thus in Great Britain an inconverti- 
ble paper currency. From 1797 to 1815 the Bank of England tripled 
its circulation, and the country banks increased from two hundred, in the 
same time, to nine hundred and forty, or almost five times. The deprecia- 
tion was, of course, enormous, not shown so much in the price of gold, 
which only reached forty-one in 1812-13, but especially in values : one 



THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 417 

4. In other respects their condition was more deplorable. 

(1.) Mutiny broke out in the camp. Whole regiments, 
with their officers, being ordered upon expeditions, refused. 
With great difficulty did Washington prevail upon them to 
abide faithful. Poverty at home and nakedness in the camp 
were destructive of patriotism. 

(2.) Sectional jealousies embittered the army. The South 
loathed the North ; the North was jealous of the South. New 
York despised New England ; New England hated New 
York. The French assumed superior airs, which terribly 
inflamed the American mind. It was even thought danger- 
ous for D'Estaing to moor his fleet in Boston harbor. 

(3.) Added to this were the jealousies and feuds of the 
officers. Duels were not unusual. Gates, Lafayette, Mifflin, 
and others were involved in them. Stark threw up his com- 
mission in a pet at being slighted ; Greene chafed at his 
post of quartermaster-general ; Wilkinson, Conway, Gates, 

pound in paper became worth but ten shillings in 1813, and, according to 
Doubleday, fell to seven or eight shillings, that is, a depreciation of near- 
ly seventy-five per cent. The price of wheat rose from 53 s. 1 d. a 
quarter in 1797 to 125 s. 5 d. in 1812 ; oats from 16 s. 9 d. to 44 s. ; wool 
from 3 s. 8 d. to 10 s. The rent of arable land increased from £88 6 s. 
Si d. to the hundred acres, in 1790, to £161 12 s. 7% d. in 1812. But un- 
like America, no increase of prices arose in England from diminished 
labor ; on the contrary, labor was supplied in abundance, and wages did 
not rise with other values ; the final rise being only about twenty per 
centum in many parishes. In this depreciated currency, worth forty or 
fifty per cent, below what the foreign fund-holders had supposed them- 
selves pledged to receive, did England pay her former creditors. In- 
dividuals, of course, complained, but it was manifest she could do nothing 
else, and this ' repudiation ' has never, we believe, been thrown in her 
teeth. The enormous volume of paper money, amounting, according to 
the best authorities, to four hundred and fifty millions of dollars in 1815, 
naturally stimulated speculation and extravagance to the highest degree, 
and left its bad effects on the national habits. Still, despite all the infla- 
tion, and with a public debt in 1815 of some sixty-seven hundred mil- 
lions of dollars, England resumed specie payments within four years 
after the termination of the war, and began a career of prosperity which 
has made her the richest nation in the world." 
21 



418 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 

Schuyler, and many others were removed, or removed them- 
selves. Above all, cabals flourished against the commander- 
in-chief. He was for a time less popular than Gates with 
Congress and the nation, and came near losing his command 
through the violent conflicts that raged around him. 

In these minor yet not unimportant points we see how 
much more kindly Providence has dealt with us. No star- 
vation has wrought mutiny in the camp ; no jealousies and 
feuds among the officers have proceeded to blood ; no cabals 
have materially weakened our cause ; no sectional jealousies 
have separated the soldiers. The flags of every State have 
waved together in the smoke of battle, filling their followers 
with a common enthusiasm, which has only provoked them 
to love and good works. If we consider how frequent were 
personal encounters in the West and South before the war, 
and how intense were sectional jealousies and animosities, 
especially against New England, we have great reason to 
thank God and take courage at the marked harmony and 
cordiality of men and States during the fearful struggle. 

" After the fathers shall be the children." In duty, in 
suffering, in reward we are the rightful descendants of these 
patient, persistent, triumphant heroes. Our cause is as 
holy, our success as sure. We may be called to emulate 
their virtues amid yet greater sacrifices. We may see our 
wealth melt away. National bankruptcy may be our ex- 
perience also. Our credit may vanish from foreign markets 
and our own. Our tables may be thinly spread with the poor- 
est fare ; our garments may be of the coarsest fabric ; our 
wharves, vessels may rot at them ; and before our cities 
foreign armaments may hover. The dead may lie in every 
house, and mourning fill all the land. Still the great ques- 
tion is before us. Shall we prove our right to the blessings 
God has conferred upon us? Will we show ourselves 
heroic sons of heroic sires ? 

To that state our foe is reduced. What is their money 



THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 419 

worth ? Yet do they fight less strenuously ? And for 
what ? An empire of sin and hell — freedom to iniquity of 
every kind and of every degree of baseness ; to overthrow 
the government and the institutions upon which hang the 
hopes of the world ; to establish despotism here, to establish 
it everywhere ; to put Maximilian safe upon his stolen seat ; 
to abolish liberty in Chili and Peru ; to extirpate democracy in 
Europe and America. If they succeed, we die. Crushed by 
enormous debts, distracted by standing armies, by burning 
animosities and divisions, we shall crumble into fragments, 
and the millennial glory that seemed breaking upon the earth 
will fade away, while the darkness of death will enshroud 
the people. Then let the minions of tyranny exult. 

" Shout, through your dungeons and palaces, Freedom is o'er ! " 

What are our losses, actual or possible, to such a catas- 
trophe ? Shall Boston and New York be as Hamburg, mere 
commercial towns, with no influence beyond their suburbs ? 
Shall rent and rending States tear each other in their mutual 
ferocity ? Shall liberty become servitude, and the world 
be thrust back into the cave of despair, from which it is 
emerging? Then let us whine, and talk of ruin, because 
gamblers crowd gold toward three hundred per cent. Ruin ? 
Well would it be if this insane thirst for wealth that is mad- 
dening the people were instantly ruined. Well would it be if 
trade should retire to the legitimate channels that it has so 
fearfully and destructively overflowed. Well would it be if 
our conceit and arrogance were ruined. But not our cause, 
nor our country. Of these we must say, "lam persuaded that 
neither poverty nor anguish, neither false friends nor fierce 
foes, neither treason nor death, shall separate me from the 
grand, eternal principles of our fathers, of our fathers' God." 

Upon us the ends of the world have come. We are the 
depository of the civil principles of the millennium. There 
is nothing more theoretically perfect in the secrets of 



420 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 

Divine Wisdom for the construction of human society than 
has been given to us. If we shall abandon them through 
love of gain, or fear of poverty, we shall be accursed of God 
and all mankind, as were his chosen people for like treason. 
The American name, now the highest, will be the lowest in 
all the earth. The American flag will be the emblem of dis- 
honor. Did England ask, How much will it cost to defeat 
Napoleon ? Reverse after reverse for a score of years did 
not daunt her purpose. A Nelson slain, and the supremacy 
of the seas slain with him, an impoverished currency, dis- 
tractions at home and disaster abroad, — these made her not 
waver. She persevered unto the end ; and for what ? To 
overthrow democracy in Europe, in England, in the world. 
Shall we be less faithful to the truth than she was to error? 
Shall we cringe, and crawl, and submit to disunion or a viler 
reunion because politicians plot for perfidious peace, and 
speculators press prices to fabulous hights ? Not if they 
multiply their stratagems and their prices a thousand fold. 

There may be worse years before us, as there were before 
our fathers at the close of the summer of 1179. Our loans 
may fail, our currency depreciate, distress and death may 
stalk through the land. What matters it ? If faithful to 
God, He will give us the victory. The work will be done. 
Slavery shall die. Our foes shall be made our footstool. 
Our fathers shall not disdain their sons. Let us be of good 
courage, and take joyfully the spoiling of our goods, know- 
ing that there is in store for us a more abundant recompense. 

" O, well for him whose will is strong; 
He suffers, but he will not suffer long; 
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. 
For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, 
Nor all calamity's hugest waves .confound, 
Who seems a promontory of rock, 
That compassed round with turbulent sound, 
In middle ocean meets the surging shock, 
Tempest-buffeted, citadel crowned." 



THE CEISIS HOUK.* 








Turn te, turn ye, from your eyil ways : for why will ye die, 
O house of Israel?" — Ezekiel xxxiii. 11. 

HREE years of war ! The three months which we 
were told at the beginning, by the most influential 
man in the nation, was to see its completion, have 
been painfully stretched into years. Again and 
again, and yet again, have our harvests of brave men been 
swept down by the reaper Death. Myriads of souls of 
heroes have descended untimely to Hades, and still the 
bloody sickle is thrust in, and still the dreadful harvest is 
gathered. 

A nation that had almost ceased to believe in war, where 
peace societies flourished, and peace ideas were in authority, 
where a uniform was a bauble pleasing chiefly to the eye of 
children, where soldiering had become the synonym of folly 
and extravagance, where every one was fancying that the 
era of armed settlements of difficulties had passed, at least 
for this country, and that the Supreme Court and the ballot- 
box were its permanent substitutes — in such a land has 
raged for forty months the most terrific, the most bloody, 



* A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the National Fast, 

August 4, 1864. 

(421) 



422 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

the most costly, the most violent war of the age, — we may 
truly say, with the great Napoleon's campaigns before us, — 
of the century and of civilization. For that great captain, 
in the same space of time, neither mustered nor mastered 
such mighty armies, neither swept over such breadth of ter- 
ritory nor slaughtered so many milliards of men. Not less 
than three millions, probably three millions and a half, of 
men have been engaged in active strife on this lately most 
peaceful soil. A number almost exactly equal to that of 
the victims whose cries to God caused the conflict, have 
thus been busily and too successfully striking at each other's 
hearts. Strange coincidence ! Nay, a marvelous Provi- 
dence, rather — a revelation of the righteous judgment of 
God. lie saw His children writhing under the lash, and 
the lust of their oppressors, under the neglect, and scorn, and 
contumely of the whole nation. He has meted out a meas- 
ure according to our sin. " There are four millions crowded 
into that black hole of America," He says — " four millions 
of My dear, despised children. Thirty millions walk proudly 
the upper deck, lift up haughty eyes to heaven, and present 
a daily prayer that My soul hateth. ' Lord, I thank Thee 
that I am not as this negro.' The four millions of their 
brethren also, daily, from the depths of their darkness and 
distress, cry to Me." And the Lord hearkened and heard. 
He descended from heaven. He set the battle in array. 
He made brother spring at the throat of brother, until, to 
the number of the enslaved, including even their wives and 
little ones, the mighty men are set against the mighty, 
while death and mourning fill all the land. 

For the fourth time since this collision cast its bloody 
blackness athwart the heavens, have we been summoned by 
the National Executive to prostrate ourselves at the foot- 
stool of God in penitence and prayer for the salvation of the 
nation. Each time the wail has been deeper, as if the fear 
increased rather than diminished with each year ; as if 



THE CALL OF GOD. 423 

rather the true sense of our peril, and of the only source 
of our salvation, began to break more and more upon our 
blinded, hardened hearts. The wounds of the Great Surgeon 
and Physician probe deeper and deeper. Our cries break 
forth more and more sharply. The sense of our awful 
crimes and our just punishment grows and grows in our 
affrighted souls. We almost begin to confess our sins. 
We have not yet done it. This Proclamation comes the 
nearest to it. Yet this fails to mention it. We bow the 
head, but not yet the knee. We pour forth prayers, but 
no confessions, especially no tears. The nation has never 
yet broken forth in the penitential cries of David, when 
he had been guilty of a far less sin. We have been guilty 
of the enslavement and murder of multitudes of Uriahs. We 
have been guilty of the ruin of millions of Bathshebas. We 
have sold from them the children they have been compelled 
to bear, reducing both the innocent victims of our shame 
and their innocent offspring to more horrid bondage. Again 
and again did God send His Nathans to tell us our sins. 
Again and again, so far from listening to His prophets, and 
prostrating ourselves before Him, have we stoned those He 
sent unto us, and, sitting in our palaces of power and pride, 
have despised God and feared not man. We have never 
acknowledged the greatness of our sin. We have never 
cried, "Against Thee, Thee only, have we sinned, and done 
this evil in Thy sight. Have mercy on us, according to Thy 
loving kindness : according to the multitude of Thy tender 
mercies blot out our transgressions. Deliver us from blood- 
guiltiness, God." 

Instead thereof, how carefully we have refrained from any 
confession of our sin ! Not yet in a single Executive sum- 
mons to penitence is there a direct reference to our national 
transgression. In the last it is glanced at only covertly. and 
by indirection. The first cry burst from the lips of the re- 
tiring President, by whose connivance the crime of national 



424 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

destruction became organized and outbreaking*. He dreamed 
not that God was to punish us because of our submission to 
the devil of slavery. He desired Union, but hated Aboli- 
tionism, and asked this people to entreat God to defeat the 
last and preserve the first, insulting Him by petitions against 
His most clear desire and purpose. Those that our later 
and better leader has issued, if less hostile to God, have not 
been more penitential or more honest in their confessions. 
Not one has mentioned the sin that has ruled us. Not 
one has asked this people to pray for its extirpation, nor 
for the uprooting of its baleful cause — our hatred of our 
brother for certain distinctions made by God Himself. The 
last comes nearest to the demands of God, and is, therefore, 
the most hopeful of all. It contains these lines, in the con- 
gressional resolution which the President has made the basis 
of his appeal : "To implore Him, as the Supreme Ruler of 
the nations, not to destroy us as a people, nor suffer us to be 
destroyed by the hostility or connivance of other nations, 
or by obstinate adhesion to our own counsels, which may be 
in conflict with His eternal purposes ; to implore Him to 
enlighten the mind of the nation to know and do His will ; 
humbly believing that it is in accordance with His will that 
our place should be maintained as a united people among 
the family of nations." Under such circumstances we come 
together. With a mighty war raging fiercely ; with wasting 
and destruction in all our borders ; with the heavens brass 
and the earth blood ; with the vultures and wild beasts of 
prey hastening from across the seas to devour the remains 
of the Great Republic ere it is dead ; with traitors on every 
side and in every haunt ; with a monstrous debt, rapidly 
accumulating ; with armies imperilled and almost exhausted 
in the long and doubtful conflict — surely never had a people 
greater cause to cry mightily unto God to come and save 
them. 

Let us sorrowfully and prayerfully consider our duties 



THE CALL OF GOD. 425 

and perils in this dark hour. Dark as it is, God can make 
it light — God only. Let ns implore His guidance, and, 
hardest of all, do His will, — 

" Hang on His arm alone 

With self-distrusting care, 
And deeply in the spirit groan 
The never-ceasing prayer." 

The cause has a bright face, if we have the humility neces- 
sary to behold it. 

Consider, 1. Our perils. 2. Our duties. 3. Our encour- 
agements. 

Our words may be familiar, even to the breeding of dis- 
gust. But that should not prevent their solemn considera- 
tion. Novelties are unseemly in the house of mourning. 
And such is this house to-day. Novelties are not needed 
in the front of the army. Earnest, courageous, steadfast 
discharge of most familiar duties alone deserves the victory. 
So with us. It is not flights of fancy that you need, if you 
crave them ; not subtilties of casuistry, not windings of 
metaphysics, not poetry, nor rhetoric, nor oratory ; these 
are as m*uch out of place as they would be in a fire engineer 
seeking the extinction of a furious conflagration ; *as they 
would be in a captain striving to get his ship, freighted with 
a precious cargo of humanity, from the rocks against which 
she is dashing. How hollow and heartless would seem fine 
phrases and postures from such a man in such an hour ! 
Much more now should we feel that our sole business is to 
hear and do the will of God. Hear with trembling, do with 
zeal ; hear with contrition, do with hope. 

Gather about His oracle. Stand upon His tripod. Let 
His afflatus breathe its divine breath into our weak and 
earthly natures, and lift them up to the stature and the 
manners of the sky. 

I. First, then. What are our perils, or why may we fail ? 
"Fail!" you say: "impossible:" the very word is treason- 



426 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

able. Nay, that depends on the spirit with which it is 
uttered. Isaiah was no traitor because he warned Israel 
that unless they repented they should perish. Nor Jere- 
miah, nor Amos, nor John the Baptist, nor Jesus Christ. 
The traitor is he who wishes or seeks the ruin of his land 
in the interests of iniquity. Not so the patriot. He warns 
that he may save. So, by divine direction, scattered through 
His word, by the authority to me committed, I must declare 
to this people the possibility of failure. Our efforts so 
marvelous and so mighty, our expenses so great, our sacri- 
fice of life so costly, our zeal so fiery x may avail naught. 
The Ship of State may go down among the breakers, among 
which she has so long been rolling. Why ? Why may we 
be blotted out of the family of nations ? Because of our un- 
faithfulness to the divine idea upon which this nation alone 
can live. Our perils are not from our foes, but from our God. 
Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not clone it ? Did 
He not tell His chosen people in the solemn threatening of 
Moses that, if they kept not His commandments, He would 
blot them out of the earth ? And has He not long since fulfilled 
that threat against five sixths of the nation, including-the very 
tribe to which Moses belonged ? It was He that brought 
the armies of the heathen to their gates. It was He that 
drove them into captivity, and made them servants of their 
enemies. It was He that abolished Israel from among the 
nations of men. Thus does He now "speak unto us in His 
wrath, and vex us in His sore displeasure." Our perils are 
not from Lee and Davis, nor from Napoleon and England, 
not even from Vallandigham and "the Courier," but from 
God. These are but the instruments wherewith He executes 
His punishments'. 

We may fail, for two reasons. 1. Because we are so 
false to Christ as a people. 2. Because we are so false to 
the lower professions we boastingly avow. When one stops 
to consider how glaring, how intense, how universal is the 



THE CALL OF GOD. 427 

impiety of this nation, he may well tremble for its existence. 
In this city of the Puritans, hardly a thousand young men 
avow themselves the servants of the Most High God. Hardly 
ten thousand, young and old, are active members of Chris- 
tian churches. Where you meet one God-fearing, God-praying 
youth, you will meet ten who drink and swear, and are lovers 
of themselves and of sinful pleasures rather than of God. 
The same proportion exists throughout the country. Not 
four millions of the twenty-four in the Free States profess 
religion — not one million of its twelve millions of males — 
not one quarter of a million of its four millions of young 
men between sixteen and thirty. Not one in ten, the whole 
land through, are voluntary servants of the Most High, — 
hardly one in twenty. With the female portion of society 
the ratio is less horrible, yet it is sufficiently fearful. The 
vast majority of them, who in other lands are almost en- 
tirely devoted to the Church, are utterly indifferent, and 
usually hostile to the claims of the Gospel. We are a 
prayerless nation. We lament the wickedness of Europe, 
the desecration of her Sabbaths. But we forget that 
their worst Sabbath-breakers attend service at least once in 
the day — that the church is crowded, if also the theater. 
We, with a more baleful consistency, seeing that the two 
are incompatible, abandon the Church entirely, and throng 
the haunts of pleasure and of sin. 

Should we not tremble for our country when we think of 
this sin ? Why should God strive to preserve a nation of 
idolaters, idolaters of the vilest kind, worshipers of self and 
sin ? What reason has He for covering this continent with 
a deluge of Sabbath-breaking, worldliness, infidelity, and 
crime ? The righteous few He can save, or transfer to 
heaven. Let the Christless many perish in their sins. 

2. But this peril is increased, if we consider how false 
we are even to the pretensions we make. As a people 
we avow our independence of Christ. We never take His 



428 THE CEISIS HOUR. 

name upon our official lips. We never recognize Him as 
our Sovereign, nor His Gospel as our law of life. But Ave 
make great professions, nevertheless. No people were ever 
more boastful ; not the English, not the French, not the 
German, all very boastful nations, ever bragging of their 
prowess, their talents, their taste. Yet none of these pro- 
claim their principles as their glory. None of them say, 
" I am the believer in the equal rights of every man.' 7 An 
almost obliterated inscription upon the arch of St. Martin, 
in the Boulevards of Paris, has the faded words, " Liberte, 
Egalite, Fraternity ; 77 but they do not blaze, by decrees of 
her emperor, from her present Arcs de Triomphe, her halls, 
her flags, her journals. They are not on the lips of her rulers. 
No word has been more upon our lips these last three years 
than Democracy, — not the false, but the true. We are the 
representatives of its claims among men. We are its armed 
defenders. In our victory it lives ; in our failure it dies. 
We have stirred our assemblies with harangues upon its 
nationalities. We have fired our soldiers with appeals for 
its preservation. We have filled our press, our pulpit, our 
people, with its inspirations. Yet we still hideously disre- 
gard its most plain and palpable injunctions. We compel 
one fifth of our people to live by themselves, to fight by 
themselves, to marry among themselves, and even to worship 
by themselves. They are more apart than the lepers of 
Jerusalem. Here and there we grant them the ballot-box ; 
here and there the privileges of schools. But never do we 
ignore the color of their face or the crinkle of their hair. 
Never do we say, " Away with the most violent foe to our 
organic idea ! All are one in Christ Jesus. 7 ' As a nation, 
we burn with contempt. We call them to our armies, but 
it is to hold inferior places. We give them no commissions, 
nor commands. We separate them into regiments by them- 
selves. We give them posts of honor and of danger, but 
still by themselves. Why should we put them thus apart 



THE CALL OF GOD. 429 

from their brethren ? Why cling" to our prejudice more 
violently than an Englishman to His ? A murder is commit- 
ted there in a first-class carriage. The public is affrighted. 
How shall its repetition be prevented ? A dozen devices 
are suggested, but the simplest device of them all — the in- 
troduction of the American rail-car — nobody dares to pro- 
pose. Why? This compels too great familiarity. "We 
must be by ourselves/' says wealth and blood, "even if mur- 
derers buy seats in our carriage and kill us, because of this 
excess of gentility. So we say to our African blooded 
people, "Keep by yourselves, even if such separation causes 
our national destruction." 

What an answer to our loud-mouthed professions of 
equality and fraternity ! What a mockery of our lives 
against our lips ! It would be ludicrous were it not for its 
awful results. The Jews, who proclaimed themselves the 
depositary of God's will, and then slew His own Son, were 
not greater hypocrites than is America to-day ; nay, they 
were not so great, for their light and knowledge was far less 
than ours. Thej^ did not know that He was truly the Son 
of God ; we do know that these are truly our brethren. Our 
Declaration is read every Fourth of July, and broken every 
other day of the year, and that also. Our friends and neigh- 
bors, who have dwelt in this land as long as we, nine tenths 
of whom have English blood in their veins, and one half of 
whom have more of that blood than of their original African, 
all of whom, if entirely and directly from the lowest tribe 
of Africa, are included in our national creed, — these fellow- 
citizens and fellow-men, born of our blood and on our soil, 
are shut out of the legitimate workings of that creed. They 
are disfranchised in thirty States of this Union. They are 
despised in them all. Why should we talk of victory ? 
Why dream of it ? What claim have we to it ? Is the 
Church erect and godlike in this matter ? Is any Church ? 
Is ours ? We had many jubilations in our quadrennial 



430 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

council, because we concluded no longer to harbor a certain 
class of sinners, when there were no more of these sinners 
to be harbored. But when the question was asked whether 
there was any objection to admitting a colored brother to 
our Conferences, it was answered gravely by the committee 
to whom it was referred, and their report accepted by the 
Conference, that "there was no legal objection" — as if there 
were moral ; thus elevating, their prejudices into the dignity 
of divine law. Then they proceed to organize colored Con- 
ferences, but give them no right of representation in the 
General Conference. Church and society join hand in hand 
in this sin, and God is not letting them go unpunished. So- 
ciety stamps upon them, crushes God's image and Christ's 
brethren, and their own, into contemptuous dust. "What 
Church would imitate the example of the first Gentile Church 
— that of Antioch ? Simeon, called Niger, put his ordaining 
hands on Barnabas and Paul. Where is the Church com- 
posed chiefly of white members, where a black man is one 
of its officers, and ordains its ministers ? even such min- 
isters as an apostle, and such an apostle as Paul. 

The like treatment the nation, as a whole, gives to its chil- 
dren, its poor, its unfortunates. Its orphans cannot have the 
same asylum as those of its white neighbors, though both 
may come from one house, nor can its children attend the 
same school. Everywhere, save in a few of the New Eng- 
land States, does this curse reign. Is it any wonder that 
we are in peril ? We are wrestling with the Almighty, not 
for a blessing, but a cursing. We annul His laws, despise 
His children ; and can we hope for prosperity ? 

II. But perils nerve true men to their duty. An enemy 
at our gates makes the coward pale, makes a hero cool and 
calm. God, who sends the dangers because of our sins, 
sends salvation, if we repent and forsake those sins. We 
may see our duty in the dreary horror of our danger. As 
the brave commander sees his when his vessel shivers in 



THE CALL OF GOD. 431 

the roaring breakers, as the competent officer discerns and 
discharges his in the surprise and shock of battle, so should 
we. We who profess to be Christians, let us seek and follow 
the way of escape. "Gird up thy loins as a man," is God's 
reply to us, when we faint, and whine, and beg, as we are re- 
buked of Him. When Joshua lay on his face, and asked God 
if He was going to destroy the nation which He had redeemed 
with such great wonders, the Lord answers with appropriate 
scorn, " Get thee up. Why best thou thus upon thy face? 
Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My cov- 
enant which I commanded them, for they have even taken 
of the accursed thing, and have also stolen and dissembled 
also." How have we dissembled ! " Therefore they could 
not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before 
their enemies, because they were accursed ; neither will I 
be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from 
among you." Joshua instantly leaps up, and sturdily follows 
the will of God ; and lo, ere the week is out, so far from being 
driven down into the valley of the Jordan, back upon his 
camps and his families, he is chasing his enemies down the 
opposite hill-side, across the plains of the Mediterranean, and 
halting sun and moon in the heavens till he completes the 
work of subjugation. Had this nation been as earnest in 
its fastings and prayers, had its President and Cabinet, 
Generals and Congress, been as sincere in their humiliations, 
they would years ago have chased their enemies into the 
Gulf, and peace and liberty have long- possessed the land. 
But they are not sincere. We are not honest before God. 
Our honest President here fails in honesty. He was honest 
in seeking the expatriation of this portion of his people, he 
is not in seeking their elevation. He still refuses to pay 
two Massachusetts regiments the same as the rest are paid. 
He refuses lieutenancies to those who, were they white and 
foreigners, would have been made major generals for their 
skill and valor. 



432 THE CKISIS HOUR. 

What must we do ? 

1. Pray for the conversion of this people. The Holy- 
Spirit must renew us after the image and power of God, or 
we perish. This nation must be holy or unholy, Christian 
or infidel. It must be converted. The Church 'should rest 
not, day nor night, praying and laboring for its salvation. 

2. The nation must conform to its lower but hardly less 
vital principle of democracy. There is no alternative betwixt 
a perfect democracy and a monarchy. Europe has proved 
this again and again. She attempted a mixed democracy 
in the Italian cities, in Venice, Florence, and Ferrara. They 
became soon dukedoms, and then appendages of a kingdom. 
She tried it in Holland, but the Princes of Orange despoiled 
their people of liberty in conferring upon them nationality. 
She tried it in Flanders, but Ghent and Bruges gave alle- 
giance to a ruling class, and lost their rights and liberties 
by their error. France tried it, but developing a military 
leader to preserve her liberties against leagued tyrants, that 
leader robbed those he assumed to protect. So will it be 
here, if we persist in declaring our rights are based on color. 
If we, who are of the aristocratic blood, declare that any 
tinge of Africa expels its possessor from the heritage of 
equality, we shall assuredly resolve ourselves into a mon- 
archy. We shall become as Greece, Rome, Venice, and Hol- 
land. We shall lose all our rights as equals. The dominant 
class will be reclassed, as in all aristocratic countries, and 
the stratifications of our society will be solidified and per- 
manent. As the Irish, who hate the Negro, are almost as 
completely excluded as their next lower neighbor from the 
superior rank of Americans, so shall we find others above 
us, and on the top of all some selected families, with ducal, 
royal, or imperial pride and power. 

If we would escape this calamity, we must abolish our 
prejudices. We must be true to our principles. Will we 
be ? God waits for our answer. To-day, if ye will hear 



THE CALL OF GOD. 433 

His voice, harden not your hearts. Our fathers hardened 
theirs, and He swore in His wrath that we should not enter 
the desired rest. Will we persist in our sin ? If we scoff 
at His commands, if we nickname His principles, as His 
people and His work have always been nicknamed by a 
mocking world, when they started upon their mission, then 
He will laugh at our calamity and mock when our fear 
cometh, when our fear cometh as desolation, and our de- 
struction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish 
cometh upon us. Calamity and fear, distress and anguish, 
are all upon us. Beware lest you hear the scorning voice 
of a scorned God sounding through terrified souls, "Where 
now is thy confidence, thy strength, thy glory ? Woe to 
rebellious children, who seek counsel, but not of Me. The 
Lord doth have them in derision." Let us hasten to expel 
this kind that go not forth without prayer and fasting. 

3. A third duty, not less imperative, is to cordially sup- 
port, while encouraging, the Church and the nation. We 
are not of that class who abandon those they seek to con- 
vert. We do not hate the Church because we condemn her 
short-comings. We do not traitorously oppose the govern- 
ment we. hope to save. With all its faults the American 
Church and the American nation are, to-day, the advance 
guard of the human race. They may be chastised, they 
maybe slain, because of their sins. That work belongs not 
to their children, but to their Creator. He can create and 
He destroy. It is ours to correct, to instruct, to aid by our 
prayers, our utterances, our sacrifices. For this work we 
may be required to lay down our lives. The period of vol- 
unteering for this service is past, that of drafting is corning. 
We may in honorable ways maintain our government without 
the surrender of our lives. We may loan the government 
our moneys ; we may restrict our expenses ; we may give 
liberally for the relief of our sick and wounded soldiers, and 
for the desolated families of the fallen heroes ; we may thus, 
28 



434 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

in many ways, illustrate our patriotism. But we may be 
required to go yet further in our zeal and our service. The 
call of the nation may summon us to its service. Substi- 
tutes may not be secured, and if secured will not always 
answer the summons to duty. The cause of liberty and 
humanity may demand our life. Let us not refuse the gift. 
It was right and proper for the persecuted Christian to try 
to escape from his persecutors ; but if caught, if summoned 
to trial, then he must manfully face his fate. Paul could 
not say, " I stand by my vows, but I will hire a trained glad- 
iator to fight the lions in my place." These were duties that 
could not be transferred. So now it may come to us. Let us 
meet it as the sons of our fathers, as the brothers of those 
who are now in battle array, or who have fallen for our sal- 
vation. You, too, may yet be called to give the parting kiss 
and start for the perilous field. Humanity hangs in the haz- 
ardous balance. Let its principles not fail for lack of your 
support. Pray, speak, fight for Christ and your fellow-man. 

III. T\ T hat are our encouragements ? Many say, "To what 
purpose is this waste of life and treasure ? " TTe have seen it 
is for purposes of punishment ; we shall also see that it is for 
purposes of mercy. God has chastened us very sore, yet 
far less than our desert. He has compelled North and South, 
alike guilty, if not equally, to scourge each other with bloody 
rods. He has arrayed millions against millions, and made 
the whole land rock with His thunders. In the midst of 
our sufferings, He has wrought salvation for His sufferers. 

1. Slavery is practically dead. Whichever way this war 
terminates, this iniquity ceases. If the South maintain 
their independence, without foreign aid they can keep no 
slaves in their borders. The nations that desire their success 
will scorn their alliance with that barbarism alive. They 
will, undoubtedly, adopt an oligarchic system of govern- 
ment, in which white and black will hold inferior, servile 
perhaps, but not slavish positions. Those awful sights, so 



THE CALL OF GOD. 435 

frequent and familiar in this land but four years since, are 
gone forever. The auction-block, the separated families, the 
plied lash, the illimitable concubinage, the enforced igno- 
rance and bestiality, the chained coffles traversing the States, 
the prison-house, the whipping-post, the hell upon hell of 
torture, shame, and sorrow, the land of darkness and the 
shadow of death, we can never see again. Many talk pertly 
of this, and say, "Five dollars expended in cowhides will 
restore the old system." Others as pertly say, " An 
amendment of the Constitution alone will save us from the 
returning flood. Hasten to erect this sea-wall while the 
tide is out." My friends, the Constitution did not kill and 
cannot kill slavery. It died by the visitation of God. It 
can never come to life again. As easy is it to revive glad- 
iatorial shows in Rome, or Druidic burnings of children in 
England, or the wanton worship of Venus at Corinth, or 
cannibalism at Otaheite. The slaveholder himself is cured 
of slavery. Jefferson Davis declares they are not fight- 
ing for slavery, but for independence. Their only cry for 
thirty years, increasing in the culmination of the outbreak, 
was, "We fight for slavery, not independence.' 7 They know 
they cannot restore that system. "With no fugitive slave 
law, with a North intensely hostile to slavery, with the 
world hating it, they must abandon their darling demon. 
It has gone down, down to its wicked hell, down beyond 
all resurrection. Enough has been accomplished for all the 
dreadful cost. With a great, but not too great a price, have 
we won this freedom. An institution many believed would 
endure for ages, lies prone for many a league. Millions of 
its victims, escaped from its devouring jaws, are exulting 
to-day in irreversible freedom. State after State is wheel- 
ing into the line of liberty. Praise God from Whom these 
blessings, so great, so marvelous, have flowed. 

2. Hardly second has been the great uplift of the despised 
race. Much yet remains to be done, but much has been 



436 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

achieved. They walk our streets with erecter mien than 
ever they wore before. The scornful white begins to dis- 
cern comeliness in their countenances, and grace in their 
steps. The lighter shades, Mrs. Kemble Butler can assert, 
are improvements on the mere white and red of our com- 
plexions, and many respond, "Amen." The lovely children 
of slavery are smothered in the ardent embraces of fastidious 
and lately loathing dames and damsels. They are warmly 
welcomed to our pulpits. They are made the advance guard 
in our most desperate assaults. They will mount the ram- 
parts of Kichmond, and aid in dictating terms of peace to 
their once arrogant masters. 

That the work is not accomplished should not make us 
repine. If Grant fails to. take Richmond, and Sherman 
Atlanta, the campaign has not failed. We have marched 
to the heart of the Confederacy. We have kept their armies 
pent up in their capitals, with but brief and temporary es- 
capades therefrom. We have possessed ourselves of two 
thirds of their territory east of the Mississippi, and one half 
of that beyond. We have not yet drained our first quota 
of fighting men, between twenty years and forty-five. The 
large class below and above those ages are still unsuni- 
moned. If Grant is delayed before Richmond, it is not for 
our destruction, but purification. The new draft of five 
hundred thousand men must embrace two hundred thousand 
blacks. Ere another year, if the war lasts that long, they 
will be Colonels and Brigadier Generals in the United States 
army. The favorite nickname of the negro and the nation, 
" Sambo " and " Samuel," is of the same origin. Is not 
this prophetic of their future identity ? Our victories are 
encouraging; so are our defeats. We have moved forward 
as fast as we deserved to move. There is much to be done 
before the war for democracy can be closed by complete 
victory of democracy. Desdemona loved Othello because 
he had saved her country from destruction ; so must we his 
American kindred. 



THE CALL OF GOD. 437 

When Jules Girard, the lion-killer of Africa, had slain one 
of these devourers of the people, he says, " Even the women 
crowded around the man with thanks and praises, who a 
month before would have fled from him as from a noxious 
beast, whose very appearance is repulsive. Now they 
talked, and wondered, and chatted, with a mixture of famil- 
iarity and respect that they would not have shown even to 
one of their own countrymen." So, when this rebellion, 
the awful master of our land and lives, shall have been slain 
by the very hands which it was started to enslave, we shall 
fail upon our knees in gratitude to our deliverer. And as deliv- 
erers are always beautiful to those they save, so will these who 
were to us before like the French soldier to the Arab wo- 
men, "a noxious beast, whose very appearance is repulsive/' 
like him become objects of respect and admiration, of regard 
and love. We shall see in them the features of a common 
parent. Adam and Eve will beam from their countenances. 
We shall welcome them as brothers and sisters, and the 
long nightmare of our fears and hates will break up, while 
the flood of bliss in us, and the sunshine of peace streaming 
upon the land, will make us glad with exceeding great joy. 

3. The last encouragement we should do wrong to omit 
is that which comes to us from foreign lands. Not the 
decrees of monarchs, not the scowls of titled leaders and 
their toady flunkies, but the honest, earnest, unanimous, 
passionate regard of the people. There was more joy in 
Manchester than in Boston when the Kearsarge sunk the 
Alabama ; as much delight in Paris as in New York. The 
people are with us. It is their war. All people are here 
fighting their masters. The "mudsill " is contending with the 
Corinthian capital; "the greasy mechanic' 7 with the scented 
lordling. The revolutions of the last century paved the 
way for the progress of this. If we win, Europe is theirs. 
The United States of Europe will wheel into line with us, 
perchance ere the century shall close, and kings, nobles, and 



438 THE CRISIS HOUR. 

standing- armies, palaces, pride, and aggrandizement of lands 
and houses, will be scattered like Charlemagne's bones, so 
that none shall gather them. The movements in England 
against primogeniture and for manhood suffrage * will triumph 
soon after we shall subdue the rebellion, and then the family 
of the Conqueror will bid a long- farewell to all its greatness. 
There is no other possible solution for that ever-recurring 
problem, if we win. And we shall win. 

" This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs; there is a Hand that guides." • 

Great as is our impiety, our insolent scorn of God and His 
children, our infidelity, our worldliness, our crime, yet He 
will spare us. He will redeem us. The world's future 
shall not be blotted out with our destruction. As He spared 
His rebellious people in the wilderness, not for their sake, 
but for the sake of the world, so will He now spare us. As 
He punished that generation with destruction for their un- 
belief, so He may this ; but our children, growing- up without 
our prejudice, with more than our patriotism, shall preserve 
this land for liberty, for fraternity, for God and His Christ. 
They shall dwell together, unmindful of color and of origin. 
They shall be one in love, and in life. As in heaven, so in 
earth, this region of all nations, kindreds, tribes, and tongues 
shall dwell together in unity — Asiatic, Afric, European, 
American ; Chinese, Negro, Indian, and all ; one people, the 
people of God, with one law, one liberty, one destiny; the 
founders of the New "World, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
"For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great 
mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face 
from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I 
have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. " 

* Her victory for suffrage -was won in three years after our war 
ceased, that of freedom of lands will soon follow. 




THE WORLD WAR 



" Behold, this One is set for the fall and the rising again of 
many." — Luke ii. 34. 




MERICA proclaimed war against the thrones of 
Europe when she declared her Declaration. The 
irrepressible conflict began at that moment. It 
has continued ever since. It is increasing to-day. 
It may come to blows to-morrow. The babe Christ, as 
Simeon told Mary, was set for the fall and the rising again 
of many in Israel, that the thoughts of many hearts should 
be revealed. Herod's palace and Hell's palace felt His 
presence. Great disputes, greater wrath raged in both. 
The events were noised abroad in hill, country, and valley ; 
from shepherds to Eastern magi and kings. Not only were 
the events a subject of discourse ; issues sharp, violent, 
deadly, instantly arose from them. The massacre of the 
babes and the flight into Egypt were but the beginnings of 
a warfare that has gone on, unceasing and without truce, 
even to this day. How many empires have fallen ; how 

A sermon preached on the occasion of the Annual State Fast, in 



Boston, April 4, 1864 



(439) 



440 THE WORLD WAR. 

many have risen since that hour ! Not always were His 
allies flying or Himself in flight. The Babe was triumphant, 
even in seeming disaster. Gods, devils, and sinners were 
alike controlled by Him. 

" They feel from Judah's land 
The dreaded Infant's hand ; 
The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky e'en; 
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, 
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew." 

So was it with the American nation in its infancy. When 
born it amazed tyrants. When but a child it confounded 
the doctors of monarchical political philosophy, and now, 
when tyrants, doctors, and the ruthless mob of sycophantic 
priests and press cry " Let it be crucified ! " they cry in 
vain. Christ only once yielded His life to His murderers. 
Death hath no more dominion over Him. No more hath 
it over His. In His Church and in His State, — the body 
whereof the Church is the soul, — shall He go forward con- 
quering and to conquer. 

The words which announce my theme should not affright 
you. Many people are very fearful of a war with Europe. 
"Don't proclaim the possibility of a war with England. Have 
not we enough on our hands to-day ? " My friends, we are 
at war with England. We have been at war with her for 
almost a hundred years. We must continue it till one or 
the other is subjugated. It is a war of ideas, a war of 
principles. Whether or not it shall clothe itself in armor 
and flow in blood, God knows. He ordained the conflict, He 
will conduct it to its divine, triumphant issue. Let us on 
this day of national humiliation and prayer consider these 
most vital, national questions. 

Man cannot escape his responsibilities. Gifts and duties 
are born together, by the creation of God. We are required 
to-day to view those gifts, not in their own blessed light, but 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 441 

in the shadow and more serious glooms of their attendant 
duties. The Christian, when he first feels the pulses of the 
divine life rising in his soul, fancies his life is to be a Gau- 
dama paradise of the perpetual contemplation of his delight. 
He soon finds that not only must he fight if he would reign, 
but he must fight if he would live. So we long fancied 
that we were to enjoy the blessings of our wonderful sys- 
tem of Union and Liberty without disturbance from within 
or without. We were aroused from our luxurious trance 
by internal enemies rushing fiercely upon us, disarmed and 
enervated in body and soul. We leaped to our feet, and 
looked hither and thither for aid ; and, lo, the very faces 
that smiled so blandly upon us an hour ago, how cold, how 
scowling now ! What hauteur, what undisguised contempt, 
what sensitiveness to the remotest and most unintentional 
interference on our part with their pretended rights and 
dignities ! What hastening to cast loving side-glances at 
our foes ! 

Did we say, " France is our old ally. Surely she will 
sympathize with us ? " We were compelled to read, as a 
response, the imperial letter, declaring our dissolution essen- 
tial to the safety of Europe. Did we say, " England, our 
mother, our commercial ally, who boasts in her liberty, and 
boasts in her abolitionism, she will earnestly espouse their 
cause who represent this liberty and abolitionism in the 
fiercest struggle to which they ever have or can be sub- 
jected ? " We were surprised to behold her, in advance 
of all others, proclaiming not merely the desirableness, but 
the fact of our dissolution, conceding our rebels belligerent 
rights, and aiding them with vessels, armaments, men, 
means of subsistence, and far from least, unceasing words 
of compliment and encouragement, through Parliament, the 
platform, and the press ? 

They were consistent, we not. They were wise in worldly 
wisdom, we fools. But we have acquired wisdom in the 



442 THE WORLD WAR. 

painful school of experience — the only school in which it 
can be learned. They saw that an earth so small as to 
have five World Conventions of its industry in ten years, 
whose ocean channels, bridged with multitudinous ships, 
would practically disappear when the telegraphic wire 
should make both hemispheres throb with one pulse ; whose 
industrial wares and devices were simultaneously sold in 
India, Europe, America, and Australia : such a pent up 
Utica could not endure two radically and bitterly hostile 
systems of government in equal supremacy. The American 
Idea appeared among these throned powers and pretensions, 
as the Nazarene among the gods of Greece and Rome. It 
could allow their existence neither as equals nor inferiors. 
No niche in the Pantheon satisfies its claims. One or all 
must die. 

Their wisdom will be the more clearly seen, if we notice 
how vital are the differences between the two systems of 
society. What is this man-child of America, against 
which, from its infancy, the kings of the earth have in- 
stinctively set themselves, and the rulers taken counsel 
together ? 

I. Three ideas were born into organized society in the 
birth of the American nation. 

1. A successful revolution in favor of human rights. 
Other revolutions have transpired in the world's history, 
not a few. This was the first that appealed to the world 
in behalf of the world. "A decent respect for the opin- 
ions " of mankind is in the inaugural sentence of the Dec- 
laration. It is fittingly completed in the enunciation of 
certain " inalienable rights " — not of themselves merely 
or chiefly — but of "all men." Rev. Jonas Clark, who 
heralded the Revolution by brave words, that were half 
battles, spoken often in the church on Lexington green, by 
which his flock was strengthened to begin the armed strife, 
by brave deeds there, was permitted at the close of the 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 443 

century to write the inscription for their monument. His 
youthful political sermons glow in its first line : " Sacred 
to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind.'' * 

What previous people ever proclaimed such a doctrine, 
ever felt its inspiration ? Their revolutions were local re- 
actions from local oppressions. The Cromwellian revolt 
was against the absolutism of Church and State. It did 
not affect the world, because it did not feel its oneness with 
the oppressed of the world. Its religious character was 
thus expansive, not its political. Hence every religious, 
but no civil Protestant, saw and sought the Protector's pro- 
tection. The Protestant Waldensians felt his uplifting, the 
Papal Irish his descending arm. 

The Dutch uprising was a brave resisting of a foreign 
foe. They regarded themselves alone, their deprivations, 
their duties. Hence they never flashed their energies into 
like suffering and seeking peoples. They had so died out 
of the memory of men that their eloquent historiographer 
has enjoyed the privileges of the novelist as well as histo- 
rian in his narrative of their exploits. Earlier revolts were 
usually the .struggles of slaves against the cord ; if suc- 
cessful, slaves still, revelling, like triumphing usurpers, more 
bloodily than their dethroned masters, in the spoils of 
victory. 

This was the first that stood upon principles as broad and 
deep as human nature. Hence the inspiration it has breathed 
into the human race. Hence, too, the ceaseless, Herodian 
virulence against it of all the monarchic and aristocratic 
tyrants of man. 

It would be a curious and valuable study to know how 
and whence these vital ideas became the soul of our Revolu- 

* This striking American usage has heen revived in our present 
struggle ; President Lincoln's immortal Proclamation closing in the 
Revolutionary style, with an appeal to " the considerate judgment of 
mankind" 



444 THE WORLD WAR. 

tion and our national being. How did the cry of taxation 
and representation — the whole preliminary struggle become 
lifted up into the hight of a contest of a people for the 
rights of man? Was Puritanism or Rousseauism its father? 
Or did both of these seemingly most hostile elements unite 
in their common basis of personal liberty, and so build up 
the great idea of social, civil, and universal liberty ? Was 
it not rather that the fullness of times had come, and 
God sent forth this new truth to renovate and unite the 
earth ? 

2. A second element of our national idea is the organiz- 
ing of the disrupted mass into planetary States, wherein the 
central idea of liberty should have fullest scope under 
righteous law. It is an easy matter to destroy ; the diffi- 
culty is to build up. The Israelites could be delivered in a 
few days. It took forty years to make them a nation. 
More miracles of Omnipotence, and the greatest of all mira- 
cles, the infinitude of the divine patience, alone changed the 
enfranchised mob into a mighty people. Cromwell could 
behead Charles. To rehead the State, "there was the rub." 
France found like difficulty. So have the Central and South 
American republics. Their triumphs were failures because 
of this weakness. 

A far greater feat, therefore, than the accomplishment of 
our Revolution was the organization of the revolted colonies 
into self-poised, prosperous commonwealths. This work de- 
manded the highest qualities — self-respect, obedience, indus- 
try, education, temperance, religion. They exhibited them 
in the highest degree. The sobriety with which they drank 
the cup of liberty amazed the world. Expelling from the 
continent the only power that could affect them, Europe 
looked to see here as elsewhere liberty speedily becoming 
licentiousness. But they failed to see the sight as logically 
as heartily desired. We were the lesson and the pattern of 
the world in our organific more than in our revolutionary life. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 445 

We built up our political temple in perfect liberty and in 
perfect solidity. Its pillars were of the hardest marble, 
though their finish was as velvet, and they touched the 
earth with the ease and grace of 

" The herald Mercury, 
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 

The State became the home and garden of liberty, shel- 
tered by the walls of law. It brought forth fruit after its 
kind, of many kinds, and of unspeakable sweetness and re- 
freshment, while the leaves of its tree were for the healing 
of nations. Thus, before the Union was formed these inde- 
pendent communities had attained civil manhood. They 
were separately free and prosperous, though as yet disu- 
nited, and therefore weak and chaotic in their relations to 
each other and the powers of Europe. 

3. There must be a force added that shall make them 
one, and so change chaos to cosmos, worlds to a universe. 
This is our greatest apparent characteristic. By this we 
become the American nation. Had it not been formed, no 
such nationality would have been known, for no State could 
have been recognized as the representative of this continent. 
Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, or the united New 
England might have had boasting sons. Not one of them 
could have spoken the proudest word man as man has ever 
uttered, — "I am an American. " To say, "I am a Roman," 
was but to proclaim one's self connected with a city. To 
say, " I am an Englishman/ ' is but to boast of connection 
with a bit of an island. To say, "I am a Frenchman, " 
" German," or " Italian," is proclaiming a nationality nar- 
rowed to a strip of a continent. " I am an American," 
asserts an heirship to a hemisphere. It is next to saying, 
"lama man." 

This step was necessary to create a nation. The segre- 
gated sovereignties must become a congregated sovereign. 



446 THE WORLD WAR. 

How shall it be done ? Can it be done at all ? It is an 
experiment that has never succeeded. Palestine tried it 
and failed. Greece tried it and failed. Rome, Venice, Hol- 
land, and others, have called themselves republics, but they 
never made their provinces their equals, much less made 
the whole a unit, of which they were but the same fraction 
as their fellows. Nothing in history was encouraging. Yet 
necessity was laid upon them. They saw that their free- 
dom, personal, social, civil, would avail them nothing if 
contending States were to dismember the continent. The 
Union must be, and it was. 

This made us a people. Europe took small note of our 
quarrel with Britain, only as the separation humbled a 
haughty neighbor. France helped us more out of revenge 
for losing the Canadas than from any hope or fear that we 
should become a powerful nation. Our disorganized state, 
for several years after peace, was after the former pattern. 
''There is no escape," shrewd politicians of Europe say. 
"but in the old way — a monarchy gradually developed 
out of weak and warring tribes/' There was but one way 
of escape, and of that they dreamed not. It was by framing 
a Union, in which some of the most vital rights of sove- 
reignty, such as the making of war and peace, regulating 
commerce and currency, and representation at foreign courts, 
were forever relinquished ; while others equally vital, as the 
tenure of property, and punishment of death, were retained. 

The Union closed up our pupilage. TTe entered on our 
majority. It lifted us out of the obscurity of barbarous and 
fighting clans into a compact, vigorous, free nationality, 
and made the world behold the dawning of a new day for 
humanity. 

It may be asked, " Was not the trail of the serpent over 
all this ? " Yes, but Eden was Eden if the devil had crept 
in there. The theory of our fathers was right. It was faith- 
fully applied to all our people, save one fraction. It was 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 447 

conferred in form, though not in feeling and in fact, upon 
them in some of the States. Our present struggle to pre- 
serve the last of these blessings, is because we had become 
false to the principle that gave life to the first, and so to all. 
We are wrestling with principalities and powers without 
and within, to the intent that our Union and Constitution 
may conform to our primal and preeminently vital doctrine — 
the liberty, fraternity, and unity of mankind. This is the 
threefold cord of individual, State, and nation, which binds 
America together. The least right of the least, citizen is 
preserved intact by the State in its sphere, and the Union 
in its, while the volitions of all flow in a mighty and steady 
volume through the whole realm, and move it, as with one 
impulse, to universal influence, perchance universal do- 
minion. 

II. Such are the principles first introduced into civil socie- 
ty, on a grand scale, by the organization of the United States 
of America. Can we fail to see that they are in most direct 
and violent conflict with the civil institutions of Europe ? 
The supporters of those institutions see it if we do not. It 
is written in the history of Europe ever since that day. 
The very year that saw the inauguration of Washington 
saw the fires of democracy burst forth from beneath the 
throne of France. Within four years from that date they 
had consumed that throne and him that sat upon it. The 
oldest and haughtiest house in Europe had set in blood, 
while the titled blood of its supporters had daily flowed, a 
dark and dreadful stream, past the Tuileries into the red- 
dened waters of the Seine. 

The kings of Europe banded themselves together against 
it, determined to put out the direful conflagration, or at 
least to keep it within its original bounds. Vain hope. 
Their very effort spread the flames. Democracy defied, 
marched forth in defiance. The flames leaped over the 
whole continent. Armed liberty swept away every throne 



448 THE WORLD WAR. 

in middle Europe, and cleansed the churches of their tro- 
phies of idolatrous obsequiousness. Crowns were trampled 
as mire in the streets. Imperial dust sleeping haughtily at 
St. Denis, Aix la Chapelle, and Spires, was driven into eter- 
nal exile. It swept on, a vast prairie fire, through France, 
Germany, and Italy. Everywhere the traces of the great 
conflagration are yet visible. All monarchic and aristo- 
cratic elements melted in the fervent heat. It changed at 
once, and in spite of momentary reaction, changed forever 
the face and the soul of the civilized world. 

III. The question naturally occurs at this point, Why were 
not these successes successful ? Why did a reaction set 
in that has maintained its supremacy, in spite of all attempts 
to the contrary, to the present hour ? The answer usually 
is, that the people of Europe were not fit to enjoy the lib- 
erties they had secured. John Adams began this charge 
as early as 1790, when, in the interests of aristocracy and 
England, he called the French people " a nation of thirty 
millions of atheists." Others fastened upon them other 
equally false imputations, such as their ignorance, violence, 
lawlessness, brutality. They are the staple excuses with 
which the tyrant ever defends his tyranny. The people of 
France, even in the bloody outbreak of the September mas- 
sacres, as a body, were peaceful and placable. That fatal 
month but feebly repaid the contempt and cruelty of cen- 
turies. They would have maintained their liberties, and 
developed them in solidest and comeliest perfection, but 
for three reasons, for none of which are they directly re- 
sponsible — the hostility of the priesthood, the league of 
frightened royalties, and, sad conjunction, the neutrality 
of America. The first caused infidelity, the second, war, 
the third, defeat and re-subjugation. 

The Papal Church clove to its natural ally, the throne. 
Of one aristocratic nature, they, share one destiny. The 
sense of right in the breasts of their devotees they strove 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 449 

to trample out with the hoof of ecclesiastical authority. The 
people saw their rights ; they saw no form of Christianity 
asserting and defending them, and they renounced the truth 
for a season, because it was made the servant of a lie. 
Yet never substantially out of Paris, never in the masses 
there, was Christ rejected. They staggered blindly, with- 
out the appointed guides, but they groped not in utter 
darkness. The same- experience has partially transpired 
here. Men of active conscience and profound sense of the 
right saw the Church speechless before the horrid demon 
of Slavery ; nay, in many of its organizations prostrate 
before it ; and they have been tempted to reject, not only 
the sinning Church, but the divine truths which have thus 
been held in unrighteousness. Yet as here so there, the 
people would have rallied from the shock their infidelity 
gave to their conscience ; the Church would have been rent 
as here, and its ministers largely allied themselves to the 
cause of man as well as of God, and faith and worship would 
have crowned and sanctified a triumphing democracy. This 
consummation was prevented by the war into which they 
were drawn by the league of all the thrones against them, 
and the refusal of this nation to aid them in their struggle 
to maintain their liberties. This neutrality created immense 
excitement at the time of its adoption, sundered Cabinets 
and Congress, threw Washington, though President, into 
the minority, and organized the party which is now breath- 
ing its last, and which is dying solely because it abandoned 
the only principle on which it began to be, earnest devotion 
to the rights of man everywhere. 

This doctrine has been a chief source of evil to ourselves 
and to our cause at home and abroad. It was a departure 
from principle under the guise of selfish policy. It was the 
first temptation and the first fall of the American nation, 
and the prolific parent of all our woes. The sword has 
been found two-edged, and the stout British arm has made 
29 



450 THE WORLD WAR. 

it cut as deep into our vitals, as our youthful arm did into 
that of the more youthful French republic. The chastise- 
ment it has inflicted has revived the once potent views as 
to its character, and the restraints, unjust, unbrotherly, 
ungrateful, and unwise, which it imposes on our proper 
duty in the affairs of nations.* 

Slavery, the parent of our aristocracy, and parent of dis- 
union and war, sprung into new life on Washington's proc- 
lamation of neutrality. The first Fugitive Slave Law was 
signed in the same year and by the same hand that had 
signed that proclamation. So soon did this fatal germ 
shoot up from the error-planted soil. That tree has grown 
with steady rapidity. We sat weak, sick, and dying beneath 
its pestilent shade. By a clear working of Providence, the 
bitterest and extremest foe to our national ideas grew out of 
their very root, because we sought to selfishly confine them 
to ourselves. The essence and perfection of anti-liberty 
and anti-Union flourished in the soil of a selfish liberty and 
L T nion. Had we vigorously aided in the establishment of 
the former ideas abroad, the latter would have never flour- 
ished at home. Our spirit would have informed our action, 
and the earnest defense of liberty there would have speedily 
delivered us from the power and the presence of slavery 
here. Had we aided our friends then we should have had 
no enemies now. That neutrality destroyed our friends and 
multiplied our enemies. No less than six republics, the 
fruit of our loins, have we sacrificed to this mistaken policy. 
We refused to hear France when she cried to us, as she 
saw the armies of Europe gathering under the lead of our 
greatest foe. "Let the galled jade wince," we wickedly 
cried >, " our withers are unstrung." Lafayette had exerted 
no small influence in giving Washington a free nation. 
Washington refuses to aid Lafayette in maintaining the free- 
dom to which they had attained. The Poles appealed to 

* See Note XVI. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 451 

our arms, but appealed in vain. Ireland twice sought to 
deliver itself from the clutch of its oppressor : we blandly 
witnessed its failure. The Central South American repub- 
lics asked for cooperation : we gave them a resolution. 
To Greece we sent brave words but no sword. We have 
calmly seen Napoleon trample out in Rome the sparks that 
our hands had scattered. Garibaldi and Mazzini looked to 
us for aid, and looked in vain. Finally, Kossuth was sent 
to us, to save us, if possible, from ruin, by bringing us into 
active cooperation with our European brethren. He passed 
through the land, the most feted and most lauded of orators. 
But he effected nothing. We were stupefied with the en- 
chantments of neutrality and slavery. " What's Hecuba 
to me, or I to Hecuba?" we selfishly proclaimed. " Let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Too true was our 
unconscious prophecy. We were then struck with death. 
" Material aid for Hungary ? Hungary, torn by the 
talons and beaks of the double-headed eagles of Austria 
and Russia? Ah, no! Hungary has our sympathy, you 
our ears, — no more." We had eaten the lotus. It was not 
for us to go a Quixoting over the world rescuing imaginary 
Dufcineas from imaginary robbers. " Liberty and Democ- 
racy for Europe," did you say ? Our grandfathers heard 
that cry, and stopped their ears. Why should we unstop 
ours. We were born deaf. 

" Our voice was thin, as voices from the grave, 
And deep asleep we seemed, yet all awake, 
And music in our ears our beating hearts did make." 

And with one voice the nation cried, — 

" Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 
To war with evil. Is there any peace 
In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? 
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave 
In silence : ripen, fall, and cease ; 
Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease." 



452 THE WORLD WAR. 

We refused to listen to his cry. He turned sadly from us, 
and lo, we were waked with the knife of our brother at our 
throat, while we cried wildly for help and no help came. 
How we staggered in blindness, and fell, weak with loss of 
spirit, of confidence, of friends, of the blood of our sons. 
Had not God lifted us, and animated us with principle, the 
higher and only life, we should have been as when He over- 
threw Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Thus have His laws had their revenge. We have expe- 
rienced the only possible result. The disease our fathers 
hated and feared, and hoped would depart, by the very in- 
activity they imposed upon us grew to an awful magnitude. 
The farewell address says, " Let us keep what treaties we 
have made, but make no more." Live in the swaddling 
bands of selfishness. Be the Japan of Christendom, and lo, 
our bandages, like a Chinese lady's shoe, compel weakness 
and corruption, not strength, sweetness and beauty. Our 
evils and perils, not repressed and eliminated by a vigorous 
out-door exercise, but nursed by an in-door luxury of indo- 
lence, make us faint even unto death. We have lived solely 
by the miraculous goodness of God.* 

IV. But if we refused to accompany our principles with 
our prowess in their march through the earth, the principles 
themselves went forth conquering and to conquer. They 
could not be hidden under a bushel though we hid ourselves 
there. Our relations were, in reality, in spite of our adju- 
rations and mercenary spirit, far more political than com- 
mercial. Our doctrines affected the theories of publicists ; 
they soon affected the practice of the people. " Every con- 
tinental writer on civil government, with a very few excep- 
tions/' says J. Stuart Mill, "for two generations, has been 
an ardent democrat." He traces this as directly to America 
as the tides in the harbor are traced to the outer sea. "A 
democratic republic," he says, " came to occupy a large 

* See Note XVII. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 453 

portion of the earth's surface, and to make itself felt as one 
of the most powerful members of the community of nations." 
Had it been free in fact and free to act, it would have long 
since republicanized Christendom. 

Every country felt that earthquake. Enceladus stirred, 
the volcano muttered, and kings trembled. Thrones rocked 
on the sea of a restless democracy. They would have been 
buried in its waves but for the rise of one man, who, like 
the inheritor of his name and seat to-day, sought to destroy 
the very principles through which alone he became the 
arbiter of Europe, its kings and its peoples. Still his 
course was ever felt to be against thrones and kings. On 
the walls of a hotel in Coblenz I saw a little picture of a 
company of European kings, to whom a messenger is an- 
nouncing the escape of Napoleon from Elba. 

" My God," cry they, with white lips, "is he come 
again ? " Such a picture in that town, full of soldiers, and 
strengthened with the finest fortifications of Europe, is as 
significant of the popular sentiments as would have been a 
portrait of John Brown in the cabin of a Charleston slave. 
For though he betrayed the cause of democracy, he was 
ever and instinctively the enemy of the feudal aristocracy. 
Marrying into them, he was still like Samson with his 
Philistine bride, none the less the foe of her brethren. 

Great Britain preserved herself from the eruption of these 
ideas in two ways. Having waged a long war with us in at- 
tempting to suppress these doctrines, her people, as is usually 
the case in belligerent nations, became largely hostile to the 
principles of those with whom they were contending. 

But this cause was slight to that created by the fears and 
the vigor of her nobility and gentry. For forty years they 
struggled to suppress the growth and extirpate the root of 
the tree of liberty. In America, in Europe, on every sea 
and shore, they waged ceaseless war. Burke became their 



454 THE WORLD WAR. 

defender, and sold his birthright for a mess of royal pottage, 
doing for the cause of man, that had nursed him to great- 
ness, precisely what his great successor, Brougham, has done 
in our day — turning on the principles and people that had 
elevated him, and fawning at the feet of a despising royalty. 
He had impeached king and nobles when he dared to con- 
front Hastings, and king and nobles knew it, and never con- 
demned that faithful ally. Not many years elapse before he 
whines, in eloquent terms, for the king and nobles of local 
oppressions as deep and damning as any committed in India. 
He leaves the people out of his category of British rulers. 
He was so sensible of his treason that he chose to be buried 
in a wooden coffin, that dissolution might be the more 
speedy, and his body escape the profanations with which 
the anticipated triumph of democracy in England would, he 
feared, assuredly visit it. 

But the ruling class was not content with the service of 
pamphleteers, however able ; they imprisoned those who as- 
sumed, with any earnestness of purpose, the popular side — 
poets like Montgomery and Leigh Hunt, editors like Cobbett, 
lecturers, almost voiceless thinkers, every one who dared 
avow their sympathy for the cause of man. They have 
suppressed substantial freedom of speech to this day.* 

* Speaking of the difference between English and continental publi- 
cists on theories of government, Mr. Mill significantly says, p. 11, "A 
similar [that is a democratic] tone of sentiment might by this time have 
been prevalent in our country if circumstances, which for a time en- 
couraged it, had continued unchanged." He elsewhere declares (p. 33) 
that "the law of England on the subject of the press is as servile to- 
day as it was in the time of the Tudors ; " and while declaring in the text 
that there is no danger of its being enforced, has to confess in the notes 
that it was enforced as late as 1858. These laws were rigidly carried 
out by Castlereagh and Ellenborough, and caused a worse reign of terror 
in England than prevailed in Erance. Here a few tyrants lost their 
heads, and executions raged for a single month. There for two genera- 
tions every lover of equal human rights has been prevented from declar- 
ing his sentiments. To do so now would insure the utterer a speedy 
acquaintance with the cell and ax of the Tower. 



ARISTOCRACY AKD DEMOCRACY". 455 

They stirred up a war with France, and compelled the Con- 
tinental monarchs to make their territory the battle-ground 
against humanity. They developed the power of Napoleon, 
and thus attained their end, his triumphs establishing the 
despotism that they loved, and overthrowing the republican- 
ism which they feared. 

Y. The present state of this conflict is not less important. 

The degradation of our people before the slave power, and 
the almost total extinction of our liberties, the utter extinc- 
tion of our sympathy as a nation with the peoples of Europe, 
had made their oppressors less fearful. Our name was yet 
a spell, perhaps, to evoke the spirit of democracy withal, 
but they saw that when we boldly supported and sought to 
extend the most anti-democratic institution in the world, 
that our name might call this spirit from the vasty deep, but 
they did not fear that it would answer us. They could 
safely send hither the heir apparent of their throne to re- 
ceive our adulations, and to witness, with pitying contempt, 
an enslaved and dying democracy. 

But the uprisal of a great people in the cause of its 
fathers, its fame, and its God, quickened all these ancient 
fears. They had visions of corresponding insurrections at 
home. Their martyrs for liberty, from Vane to Orsini, arose 
to avenge their cause by creating the free and equal state 
for which they had died. 

Hence they instantly arrange themselves on the side of 
our foes. They leap to embrace the hideous monster of 
Slavery. Its bloody hand is at the throat of democracy. 
They trust it will stifle its divine life here and everywhere 
forever and forever. 

1. The British government lead off in this degrading al- 
liance. It brought forth fruit after its kind. The recital of 
the acts in which the feelings of the British aristocracy found 
expression would be longer than that in which our first Con- 
gress indicted its king. Before a battle had been fought, 



456 THE WORLD WAR. 

even before an army on either side had been gathered, it 
took every possible step to insult, weaken, embarrass, and 
destroy our government, except that of active hostilities, 
and this was withheld only from fear of civil war at home. 
It sheltered piratical steamers in its harbors ; and when our 
vessels of war lay in wait for them in the Channel, it put 
its men of war under their bows, with directions to blow 
them out of the water if they presumed to obey the orders 
of their government. And this too, not in British waters, 
but upon the high seas. It forbade our national vessels from 
staying in its ports over twenty-four hours, or coaling there 
oftener than once in three months, while its own vessels 
rode at anchor in our harbors. It recognized the rebels as 
belligerents before they had fought a single battle; when 
they had only mastered a single fort and a starving garrison. 
To do this was to recognize them as a nation ; for nations 
only have a belligerent, that is, a war-making power. This 
it did not grant to Italy till all her battles had been fought 
and won. This it never gave to Hungary, though she was 
for months successful, and was only overthrown by foreign 
intervention. This it did not give to Poland, though she 
maintained for over a year a provisional government by 
arms as ably as the Confederates did theirs, and that too 
against a power it hates and dreads almost as much as it 
does the United States. The all-important difference is, that 
the rising of Poland is against it own institutions, our in- 
surrection is in its favor. Russia is dangerous to its empire, 
America to itself. Russia may rob it of India, our ideas 
will rob it of England. 

The whole scope of its proclamation was to confer nation- 
ality upon the rebels. So they understood it. So did we. 
So did England herself. It would have been followed by 
its legitimate acts but for the grand uprising of our people, 
and a fear of the future at home. 

Her course subsequently was consistent. In her feelings 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 457 

as well as policy that were exhibited in the Trent imbroglio, 
in allowing armed privateers to sail from her ports, in re- 
fusing to amend her laws while acknowledging their inef- 
ficiency, so as to control these pirates, she acted according 
to the theory she wished and purposed should prove true. 
Lord Palmerston was called in Paliament " our Confederate 
Premier" amid the applause of the house. He declared in 
his seat that "the difference between him and Mr. Cobden 
consists in the fact that Mr. Cobden considered that but one 
government exists within the original boundaries of the 
Union, while the administration have, from the beginning, 
acted as if there were two." That is, they gave the rebels 
a practical, but not formal recognition. 

All this has been done by instinct. " Instinct is a great 
matter." It made them detect and worship monarchy in 
the disguise of the robber Slavery, as it made Falstaff dis- 
cern and respect his master in the garb of a highwayman. 
It has been as natural and universal with the ruling- classes, 
as has been our enthusiasm here for the Union. " Five 
sixths," Mr. Cobden declared, " of the upper classes were 
in favor of our disruption." As here a few adhered to 
slavery and secession, the apparent, against freedom, the 
real national idea, so there a few have stood forth for the 
theories and boastings of the nation against its root and 
ruling principle. These few were most rarely in govern- 
mental positions, much less of titled and gentle blood. Al- 
most every lord, however mushroom, was meanly unan- 
imous. Abolitionists like Brougham and Shaftesbury, liberals 
like Morpeth and Russell, men of tact without principles 
like Palmerston and D'Israeli, all took counsel together 
against us. The Duke of Argyle was almost the only titled 
exception to this universal law. 

The gentry, who are the wall-flowers of the nobilit} 7 , — out- 
side wall-flowers, ever trying to creep over into the sacred 
inclosure, even if of such blood as Buxton and Wilberforce, 



458 THE WORLD WAR. 

turned up their noses at the dead democracy of America. 
" An ounce of civet, good apothecary," they cried, "these 
west winds smell dreadfully." 

The lackeys of the Church, press, of the counting-house 
and factory, fell into like spasms. They all wore livery. 
They worshiped the upper, and trampled on the lower 
classes. They joined the upper in their detestation of 
America. 

The Times declared that not a gentleman, member of 
Parliament, nobleman, nor representative Londoner sat on 
Mr. Beecher's platform at Exeter Hall. It carried its syc- 
ophancy to such a pitch that it asserted that " the two 
essentials of a government to-day are monarchy and money." 
Thus stood ruling England till success crowned our arms ; 
thus in feeling stands she still. 

It is in no spirit of invective that we make this record, 
but simply as students of natural laws, which work as clear- 
ly and inevitably- in the realm of politics as in that of science 
and religion. They are the creatures of the idea that con- 
trols them — an idea irrepressibly hostile to that which has 
been in debate on our fields and seas, and which has come 
forth the unquestioned conqueror. They will yet rejoice in 
its overthrow, and in their absorption into the grander name 
than Queen, Lords, and Commons — even that of the People 
of England. That people we profoundly esteem. They 
have acted as nobly in their chains, as our slaves did in 
theirs. We doubt not their future sovereignty, and an 
increasing glory to the national name when that hour 
dawns. 

2. But our conflict with continental crowns is none the 
less positive though less marked. It is less marked because 
those crowns have had all that they could do to keep their 
places on their masters' heads, — so intelligent and deter- 
mined are their peoples. Blondin has too much to do in 
keeping his balance over the deadly-flying glassiness of 



ARISTOCEACY AND DEMOCRACY. 459 

Niagara's stream to attend to the difficulties of rival 
gymnasts. The Pope, Francis of Austria, William of 
Prussia, Victor Emanuel, the King of the Danes, all are 
tossed on the wildest seas, and may in a moment be dashed 
upon the fatal rocks of Democracy. 

Napoleon was the only one that could look abroad, and 
he more because he is a Blondin, the prince of tight-rope 
dancers, than because his vigilance is less or his peril less. 
From him learn all. He made our traditional friendship with 
France a deceitful brook. Why ? Because his France is 
not France. She is garroted. He speaks for himself, not 
for his people. They are intensely democratic. Their elec- 
tions show the vitality of their democracy. He knows that 
our salvation is his destruction, our destruction his preserva- 
tion. Therefore has he steadily sought our ruin. With the 
complicity of England, Spain, and Austria he seized Mexico 
as the basis of operations against us. His success there 
drew forth the public congratulation of every crowned head 
on the Continent. They trusted that this triumph assured 
our overthrow. 

The European Church, in its highest officials, has been 
their close ally. The guns of St. Angelo exulted over the 
fall of Mexico. The Pope went still further in revealing his 
fears of democracy, when he called Jefferson Davis " Illustri- 
ous President." The Protestant State Churches have been 
equally unfriendly. They see that the bands of Church 
and State will be the first to dissolve when the state and 
the people are one. John Bright, the future Premier of 
England, has already more than hinted at such a separa- 
tion.* 

VI. Such is the past and present conflict of America with 
Europe. It has a future. We can read it in their light. 

* This step is already taken in the election of a Parliament pledged 
to disestablishing of the Irish Church. The elder must follow her daugh- 
ter, and State and Church cease to be one. 



460 THE WORLD WAR. 

It is simply this, Europe must become a Union of Democratic 

Stales, in league, if not one with America. The instinctive 

cry of the people of France and America just threescore 

years and ten ago must be answered, — " We are One." 

Great truths are always simple. When first announced 

they are apt to appear visionary. Yet when once embraced 

they become as familiar and pleasant as light and life. The 

truth of the absolute unity of Man, how simple, how sublime ! 

And yet when we see in a brightness above the brightness 

of the sun, whither it is leading us, how many start back 

appalled, — 

"And each particular hair doth stand on end, 
Like quills upon a fretful porcupine." 

So this self-evident, imperative, fast-hastening event, how 
few believe, how few delightedly embrace ! How many say, 
"Why, they are not fit to govern themselves." So we said, 
till within three years, " The slaves are not fit to be freed at 
once. They must be trained to liberty." Nobody but a 
little clique of so-called fanatics dared to cry, for thirty 
years, "Immediate and Unconditional Emancipation ! " and 
they did not dare, had they desired, to add, "By the red 
arm of War." If they had, they would have perished, or 
ere their truth was born. But God has answered their cry, 
though in a way of which they dreamed not. The slaves 
were liberated in an instant, thrust out in a night, as were 
Pharaoh's, through our fear for ourselves, not regard for 
them. New Year's eve will ever be the American-Afric's 
Passover. And lo ! at the sight every one exults. They 
declare it to be marvelously natural and proper. In fact, 
it is the only possible way. 

So shall we see concerning this truth. It started from 
Independence Hall. It will not cease to march till it has 
subdued the world. Its line has g-one out through all the 
earth, and its words unto the end of the world.* 

* See Note XVIII. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 461 

Not a state, except the free state of Switzerland, and the 
wealthy state of England, but that has been rent with this 
new cloth sewed into its moth-eaten purple. The new wine 
is ever bursting the rotten bottles of hereditary privilege, 
from which they are trying vainly to exclude it. They are 
ever busy repairing their ragged robes of royalty, which 
the people are ever rending, but the Sartor Resartus has to 
do his patching with new cloth — popular suffrage, constitu- 
tional government, or some fresh-woven bit from the Amer- 
ican looms. 

The conflict is springing up in England. Her political 
managers are the shrewdest in the world. They have 
steered, with remarkable skill, their Ship of State. Through 
the war they held high carnival. They were warm sup- 
porters of the murderer of Liberty in France : they talked 
about Poland, but declared they would do nothing to save 
her. They allowed the people to compliment Garibaldi, 
while they rejoiced that Victor Emanuel had shot him. I 
heard Mr. Disraeli thus sharply and truly retort on Lord 
Palmerston, when he declared that the cause of the unity 
of Italy required the countenance of his government. 

" The noble lord observed that not any generous word 
of sympathy, no word of approbation, ever came from me 
in favor of the Italians. That cannot be said of the noble 
lord. Words enough he has given the Italians ; but what 
more he has given, the Italians know best. I can only say, 
that if all the encouragement they have received, and all 
the assistance they have had in their hard fortunes, were 
furnished by the noble lord, I doubt very much whether 
they would occupy the position which they now do." 

Even these " windy inspirations of forced breath " were 
not given until a year after their liberties had been achieved. 
And these same rulers of a Protestant nation have since al- 
lowed Napoleon to suppress liberal institutions and free- 
dom of religion in Mexico, and to seek to establish monarchy 



462 THE WORLD WAR. 

and papacy in that land, solely that their class might not 
be absorbed by the natural growth of democracy here and 
at home. 

But that democracy is growing. Every ardent advocate 
of America is a latent or patent, a nascent or adult demo- 
crat. John Bright, their Quaker leader, — like our Quaker 
leaders, he who started the great reform, and he who for a 
quarter of a century has written the battle-songs of freedom, 
— is a bold and earnest fighter in its ranks. His head may 
yet grace the block in behalf of the cause of man. He has 
had the courage to say that a President elected by the suf- 
frage of a free and equal people, is in a far loftier seat than 
one inheriting a throne. He talks of a world-republic after 
the model of America. His coadjutors, just returned to 
Parliament, will replace the fallen Cobden in their zeal for 
the people. Hughes boasted that the men of toil gave him 
his seat, and Stuart Mills was yet more pronounced in his 
adhesion to the principles which will necessitate democracy. 
Gladstone appeals from the most conservative to the most 
radical of constituencies. He must regard the people who 
trust him. 

Poland, in its brief insurrection, revealed the same ten- 
dency. The proclamation of the national committee was 
based on that of President Lincoln's. The serfs were prom- 
ised freedom and the possession of the soil they till, — in 
this respect in advance of our proclamation and action, — 
while loyal masters were to be reimbursed from the national 
treasury. Such decree, if carried out, would change the 
face of Europe. Lest it should be carried out by the suc- 
cess of the people, the three powers of England, Austria, and 
France hastened to inform Russia that she must make some 
concession, or they would take the matter into their own 
hands. Not by recognizing this decree and establishing the 
republic of Poland — a thousand times, no ! but by the erec- 
tion of some sort of a kingdom, whose movements should 






ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 463 

not jar too harshly the Prince Rupert's drop in which each 
of them dwells. The success of Russia in suppressing the 
uprising made them rescind their demands. It was not to 
humble her, but to save themselves, that they were so active. 
That success will yet result in failure : the principles of that 
uprising must prevail if their nationality fails. 

Italy is thus breaking the bonds of centuries. Michael 
Angelo's gigantic, heavy slumbering Night is changed into 
the more gigantic, arousing Day. What life, what strength, 
in its Samsonian limbs ! It will speedily awake, arise, and 
go forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber. He who has 
once trodden its soil, and seen the enthusiasm of its people 
for Garibaldi, whose bust and picture are everywhere, knows 
that its present government is but the brittlest of cords that 
holds for a moment the upsoaring eagle. France alone can 
stay the unification and republicanizing of that land. 

Greece cast off the incubus of ages in an hour, and 
proceeded, in calmest style, to elect her ruler. I saw that 
election in Athens. It was exactly like one in America — 
the same talking in the streets and at the cafes, the same 
running of carriages with voters for rival candidates, the 
same counting of the ballots at the polls, in fine, a purely 
American idea, as is universal suffrage carried out in purely 
American style, in that most ancient and most famous of 
democracies. The ostracizing and approving shells and 
pebbles, carried round the Pnyx, were replaced by poll 
booths, inspectors of elections, ballots, and all the other 
paraphernalia of her sister more than twenty hundred years 
younger. Had not England restrained her, she would have 
declared herself of the political faith of her fathers. In 
conjunction with Napoleon, that power compelled them to 
continue their throne. They called a pale lad from the 
Rhode Island of European kingdoms to rule a nation of 
democrats, whose constitution, like ours, forbids any citizen 



464 THE WORLD WAR. 

from wearing a title. More than one Athenian said to me, 
at that time, that England would not allow them to establish 
a republic. She appoints their head as indifferently to their 
wishes or to the popular suffrage, over which they were so 
jubilant, as an Arab is to his daughter's choice of a hus- 
band, or a slaveholder's to his slave's choice of anything. 
A great time they had with their universal suffrage. The 
king they get had not a single vote. The prince they al- 
most unanimously ask for, as well as the nation that invites 
him, are quietly snubbed by the Great Powers, so called, 
that adjust the affairs to suit their own convenience; and 
yet when there is an outbreak there, people say they are 
unfit for liberty. They had no outbreak till their rights as 
a people were trampled in the dust. King George affects 
the citizen king, going about in plain costume and unat- 
tended. If he is equal to this role he may reign a few 
years, because he recognizes the people ; and he may not. 
Whether he reigns long or short, the inevitable future of 
Greece is freedom and democracy. 

So is it everywhere, and everywhere it is taking more 
and more the threefold American form. 

A revolution in favor of the equal rights of all. This is 
accomplished in Switzerland, Greece, Italy. No titles are 
allowed in the first two to any citizen, but few in the last. 
It is substantially so in France, and becoming rapidly so in 
Poland, Russia, and Germany. 

The organization of these people into States, electing 
their rulers, and enjoying local independence and liberty. 

Their union into one nation. 

The pronounced sympathies show how rapidly this union 
of feeling, antecedent to a union of fact, is pervading Europe. 
Huge Garibaldi meetings were held in England, suppressed 
by the government professedly out of fear of the Irish, but 
really out of fear of the Ideas. Like meetings assembled in 



AKISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 465 

behalf of Poland, in London and Paris. The leaders of the 
same idea, in different states, are beginning to see eye to 
eye. Kossuth works for Garibaldi ; Garibaldi sends a proc- 
lamation to Hungary as he starts for Rome. Victor Hugo 
and Garibaldi issue proclamations to the Poles. Failure 
only binds them closer together, and nerves their souls for 
future victory. As Washington in Virginia, Adams in New 
England, Hamilton in New York, Franklin in Pennsylvania, 
and Pinckney in South Carolina, saw the absolute necessity 
of union for success, so these wise men are working together 
for one end. As the kings conspire against their peoples, 
so do these leaders of the people breathe one breath against 
their oppressors, — Union of all, Liberty for all. 

Before this goal is reached, civil war will doubtless break 
out over the whole Continent. From Belfast to Moscow, 
from Scotland to Greece, the uprising may be bloody, des- 
perate, universal. England, the slowest of all European 
states, is rapidly developing three parties — the radical dem- 
ocrats, radical monarchists, and timid go-betweens, whose 
sympathies incline them to the former, and fears compel 
them to the latter. In a late number of the London Watch- 
man, the organ of the Wesleyan Church, the whole subject 
is summed up in an article against John Bright. It says, 
" That democracy may rule forever, from ocean to ocean, is 
a project so precarious, though so vast, that no wonder Mr. 
Bright's eyes can be so dazzled by it as not to perceive the 
Red Sea of blood which is now weltering between. We 
hope that the honorable gentleman, in the lack of other 
topics, is not about to preach up republicanism in Eng- 
land." 

The people of Great Britain will follow Bright, or any 

other leader, through that Red Sea to the Canaan of equal 

rights that lies beyond. The very lull in English politics 

which that article notices, is precisely like that which oc- 

30 • 



466 THE WORLD WAR, 

curred here as we were approaching the dread crisis. The 
questions of bank, tariff, foreign population, and papal in- 
fluence, that had organized great armies under their banners, 
died out of the public mind, and one sole absorbing theme 
took their place.* Whether Mr. Bright has the qualities 
for the leadership in this struggle remains to be seen. He 
may be too old and too peacefully educated for the full de- 
mands of the hour. He may be the John Quincy Adams, 
seeing and saying what others will achieve. Some younger 
man, whom his sentiments shall inspire, may take up the 
standard when he pauses, and advance to death and victory. 
When begun, whosoever first falls will be followed by his 
destroyer. This lull can only be changed by the coming 
conflict between aristocracy and democracy — first with 
voice, then, we fear, with arms. The late election portends 
this future. The voice of the people was low, but it was 
clear ; never so clear before. Their leaders must come to 
this issue, or give way to those that will. 

On the Continent is witnessed a like uprising. The king 
and representatives of Prussia have been in a permanent 
feud for more than three years. They are getting- into 
closer conflict. He is suppressing liberty of speech, as he 
has the liberty of the budget. But one issue can come 
ultimately of the struggle. f Napoleon and Paris are in 
open opposition. Denmark's late king threatened to trans- 
form his kingdom into a republic on certain contingencies. 
Though he failed to keep his promise, his people may not 
fail to remember it. They may say, "We thank thee, king, 
for teaching us that word/ 7 and proceed to do for them- 

* The excitement that has sprung up since, and the center around 
which it revolved, confirm these views. The ballot has been extended, 
and a long stride made toward a democratic republic of Great Britain. 

f The vast changes in Prussia are really the triumph of the people. 
A united Germany insures a German republic. Bismarck discerns this 
future, and is preparing the way for it. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 467 

selves what he shrank from doing for them. The tongues 
of fire leaping out of every crevice of the tottering state- 
craft of Europe, betoken an inextinguishable conflagration. 
Into this war we may be drawn. 

VII. The many attempts at liberation that have been 
made for almost a century, have failed, for three reasons : 
the leaders of the people had no concert of action, while 
their masters were in close league ; they had no sympathy 
nor guidance from the Church, and, especially, they had 
no nation to help them, while many nations were banded 
against them. 

1. The first, as we have seen, is being changed. European 
democrats feel that as their arms and interests are one, so 
must their efforts be. But one barrier separates them — 
language ; and that is ceasing to be a barrier. Switzerland, 
their model in its government, is their representative in its 
condition. Italian, French, and German almost equally 
divide their territory. Among the mottoes for a national 
celebration at Xeuchatel, was this : " Our enemies say we 
speak so many languages they cannot understand us. Let 
them attack us, and they will find that we have but one 
tongue — the cannon." So will it be with the people of 
Europe, They will yet speak one word — Liberty — with 
one mouth, the cannon, against one foe — their masters, for 
one object — a European republic. 

2. The second cause of their prolonged failure lay in the 
want of sympathy of the Church with their movement. The 
position of the Church in our Revolution was most valuable. 
" The opening ball of the Revolution," John Adams pro- 
nounced young Mayhew's sermon on the Higher Law, that 
he preached in the West Church, Boston, in 1150, on the 
anniversary of the execution of Charles I. ; which the Pu- 
ritans were compelled to recognize, but which he turned 
into an opportunity of defending the deed, and of inaugurat- 



468 THE WORLD WAS. 

ing our liberties. It took a generation then, as it has in our 
present revolution, to develop the truths that must, ere 
they be perfected, bear 

" The blood-red blossom of war, with a heart of fire." 

With him, and after him everywhere, the clergy came to 
the defense of the great principles of Liberty and Indepen- 
dence. 

Not alike fortunate was European democracy in its earliest 
conflicts. The Church was its chief adversary. It was 
constrained to oppose her in its attempts to obtain its rights. 
This wrought the scoffing infidelity of Yoltaire and Rousseau. 
This, too, wrought her destruction. An atheistic democracy 
was more dangerous to the people than a corrupt and slavish 
priesthood. But to-day this powerful class are joining and 
leading the people. The dissenting clergy of England are 
becoming more and more identified with the political, as 
they have always been with the religious principles of their 
ancestors, the Puritan ministers of the Commonwealth. 
The Protestant clergy of France, by their unanimous letter 
to us of sympathy and encouragement, show themselves fit 
to guide their great nation in its escape from the Giant 
Despair castle, where treachery and violence have so long 
chained and beat it. The archbishops of Greece, first of all 
in the public ballot signing- their names for a Protestant 
prince, while the constitution forbids any one not of the 
Orthodox or National Church, to ascend the throne, proved 
that they are willing to lead their people toward liberty at 
the expense of a wrongful edict of their constitution. Eleven 
thousand Italian priests petitioning the Pope to abrogate his 
temporal sovereignty, proves that Garibaldi has high and 
numerous helpers in this most, we might almost say only, 
influential body in that land. The Catholic and Protestant 
clergy of Hungary are largely identified with the people. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 469 

They refused greater privileges offered by the Austrian gov- 
ernment than they hoped to obtain in their own independent 
action. Thus is the Church coming up out of the wilder- 
ness, the leader and benefactor of the people. Her con- 
version will go forward, and insure to the future European 
republic a stable and Christian triumph. 

3. The last defect we may have to remedy. To save our- 
selves we may be compelled to save others. We shall then 
be the inspiring and molding nation that they have long 
needed. As England molded and inspired all Europe for a 
quarter of a century to resist and overthrow republicanism in 
Europe that she might preserve her own aristocratic institu- 
tions intact, so America, her grander daughter, may have 
to guide those peoples in a conflict for republicanism, how- 
ever long, however costly, however bloody. We are the only 
great nation that represents the sovereignty of the people. 
We may be compelled to maintain that sovereignty every- 
where with the sword. They turned our neutrality between 
themselves and their people into a like neutrality between 
us and our slave-mongering rebels. They set at naught a 
compromise we made, not they, by which, without their so- 
licitation, we abandoned Europe, and declared this continent 
should be ours. We must abandon a vow, that we should 
have never made, to confine ourselves to this hemisphere. 
England is nearer than Mexico, France than South America. 
We may have to carry freedom there, in return for their 
attempt to bring slavery here. Mr. Sumner in his speech 
on our foreign relations, more than suggests this issue. He 
describes the armed intervention of Cromwell in favor of the 
Walensians, in words that glow with a kindred enthusiasm 
for the like oppressed, and struggling, and despoiled Hun- 
garians, Venetians, and Romans of to-day. He says, — 

"A mightier pen than that of any plodding secretary was enlisted in 
this pious intervention. It was John Milton, glowing with that indigna- 



470 THE WORLD WAR. 

tion which his sonnet on the massacre in Piemart has made immortal 
in the heart of man, who wrote the magnificent despatches in which the 
English nation of that day, after declaring itself ' linked together with its 
distant brethren, not only by the same type of humanity, but by joint 
communion of the same religion,' naturally and gloriously insisted that 
whatever had been decreed to their disturbance on account ©f the re- 
formed religion should be abrogated, and that an end be put to their 
oppressions." 

He shows that Cromwell was not content with mere pro- 
nunciamentos, but sought to enlist the Protestant powers in 
their favor, and proceeds, before such a league can be ef- 
fected, to intervene with arms. This martial display wrought 
the desired end. Had it not, the flag of St. George and the 
Cross would have waved in the mountains of Savoy, beside 
the banners of persecuted Protestantism, for the cause of 
Liberty of the Soul. Of this event, Mr. Sumner makes the 
following pregnant application. In his concluding passages, 
after describing our relation as a Republic to the European 
monarchies, he adds, — 

" Born in this latter day, and the child of its own struggles, without 
ancestral claims, but heir of all the ages, it will stand forth to assert 
the dignity of man, and wherever any member of the human family is to 
be succored, there its voice will reach, as the voice of Cromwell reached 
across France, even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps. Such 
will be this Republic — upstart among the nations. Ay, as the steam- 
engine, the telegraph, and chloroform are upstart. Comforter and helper 
like these, it can know no hounds to its empire over a willing world." 

Even if this third element be kept from the seething 
caldron of European politics, so far as armed intervention is 
concerned, the other components will unceasingly disturb 
and ultimately dissolve their thrones. If we refuse to hear 
the cries of those who are "linked together with us by the 
same type of humanity and by joint communion of the same " 
political faith, our institutions and success will fight for 
them. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 471 

The two ideas are abroad in the earth ; they are wrestling 
for the crown of the world. Democracy has clothed itself 
with continental thunders, is regnant in a mighty state. The 
world is too small for two such hostile systems to hold equal 
sovereignty. All peoples are fast becoming one people. 
They can have but one system of government. It must be 
that of themselves. We are its divinely appointed rep- 
resentatives and defenders. We may be its divinely armed 
and appointed propagandists. 

Such is the clear, unanswerable logic of principles, the 
necessary precursor of the more evident but not more certain 
logic of events. Our propositions are stronger than Euclid's. 
They are the mathematics of humanity, of morals, of the 
Spirit of God. 

Thus stand the relations, past, present, and future, of Amer- 
ica to Europe, its kings and its peoples. The first century 
of our nationality is rapidly concluding. It is a century of 
greater progress in political thought and life than any, in 
some respects, than all its predecessors. In all this activity 
America is foremost. She is a sign that is spoken against. 
Yea, a sword has pierced through her own soul also, that the 
thoughts of many hearts, at home and abroad, may be re- 
vealed. Many states have already risen, and fallen, and 
risen again under her involuntary influence. That influence 
is but just begun. If she casts off the grevious sin that has 
beset her, if she humbles herself before her G-od and Savior, 
if she carries out faithfully her own principles of equality 
and fraternity through all her social and civil life, ignoring 
distinctions of color as she does those of language and 
birthplace, she will stand forth, under Christ, the redeemer 
and mistress of the world. The enslaved of Europe will hail 
her midday glory with greater acclamations than they have 
her dawning beauty. They will struggle the more fiercely in 
their chains. They will snap them asunder. We are set 



472 THE WORLD WAR. 

for the fall of tyrants and the rising of the nations. Our in- 
fluence will not be confined to this continent, but will renew 
and unite the world. The nations that have so long sat in 
darkness, and have now seen the great light, will come to* 
that light, and kings to the brightness of its rising. Thus 
and then will wars cease to the end of the earth, the mil- 
lennial glory rest upon the world-republic, and universal 
liberty, equality, and brotherhood bring universal peace. 




THE END NEAK.* 



" The morning cometh." — Isaiah xxi. 12. 

" Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Day- 
spring PROM ON HIGH HATH VISITED US." — Luke i. 78. 




FTER a long, long night of clouds, and darkness, 
and storm, thunderings, and lightnings, and tem- 
pests of blood, with faint gleamings of the muf- 
fled stars at times, to show us that the heavens 
still abide, yet with no grayness even betokening the actual 
dawn, suddenly we see the " King of Day rejoicing in the 
East." The shadows flee, the golden glory covers the hori- 
zon, and shoots its radiance across the whole heavens. Even 
the blindest bats of night, that beat their leathery wings 
and eyeless heads against the walls of the national temple, 
confess that something bright and beautiful is stealing over 
their feeble senses. They know not what it means or is. 
For they have torn out their eyes with their own claws. 
They feel a warmth, a sunniness, pervading their spirits, 
that compels their unwilling recognition of the coming day. 
But these poor, darkened creatures apart, the people see 



* A sermon preached in Boston on the day of National Thanksgiving 
for General Sherman's capture of Atlanta, September 11, 1864. 

(473) 



474 THE END NEAR. 

the light, and rejoice in it, and hasten to the brightness of 
its rising. Most true in this case was the familiar saying 
verified — the darkest hour is just before day. Last July 
and August were probably the gloomiest months since the 
night of war closed us in. Our armies lay in their trenches 
while marauding bands vexed their rear. Our mines ex- 
ploded only to our loss and not the enemy's. The North was 
invaded, and triumphantly trampled by robbing feet. For 
the first time since the war the enemy cut off" our commu- 
nications with the capital, and defiantly approached its very 
gates. Our villages were sacked and burned to the ground. 
Gold leaped up to three hundred. Provisions and wares 
followed at a yet swifter pace. The earth burned like an 
oven. Nature, too, lay sick with a fever, and seemed to 
be dying with the dying nation. And, as a fitting crown of 
all the calamities, thousands upon thousands of traitors, a 
generation of vipers, " a coil voluminous and vast," assem- 
bled in one of our greatest cities, the especial symbol and 
proof of the magnificent workings of our free institutions, 
on the birthday of our first great traitor, Benedict Arnold, 
great, but far less than these his children, and there under 
the guidance of men who had been openly consulting with 
our open foes for months before, with jubilant and hopeful 
hearts, plotted the dismemberment, the reenslavement of 
the nation — nay, not plotted, boldly exulted in her ruin.* 
Through the words of one who had once been placed by 
the nation in its highest seat, they defied the government 
to prevent traitors from seizing and controlling the polls, 
declared the only rebellion in the land to be that of the 
rulers against the people, spoke no word of reprobation 
against those who for more than three years have struck 
terrific blows at the national life, and but for God's right 
arm would have long since cast it as dead among the nations 
as Egypt or Rome. Such was the dreadful record of those 

* The Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention. 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 475 

burning- months ; drouth in the heavens and on the earth, 
the war hanging dubious, weakness in the hearts of the 
people, and treason stalking boldly through all the land. 

" The red-ribbed ledges dripped with a silent horror of blood; 
Echo, whatever was asked her, answered, ' Death.' " 

Yet, lo ! almost in the twinkling of an eye, the scene 
changes. The heavy clouds not only seemed to shut out 
the day, but to proclaim an everlasting night — the night 
of death and national destruction. Beasts of prey roamed 
everywhere through our land. Their hideous howls af- 
frighted our ears. Across the continent rolled their can- 
non. The grave yawned, and multitudes of ghosts of cow- 
ards and traitors went gibbering through the streets. 

And now we cry, the morning cometh ! — the blessed 
morning of peace and liberty ! It is really breaking. These 
are no cold, deceitful, auroral beams betokening a deepening 
winter. They are the true dayspring. The Dayspring from 
on high is visiting us. The present Thanksgiving Procla- 
mation of the President has a more confident and cheerful 
tone than any of its predecessors. He penetrates the 
dread entangled forest. This valley of the shadow of death, 
with its fiery, flying serpents hissing and stinging, with its 
darkness, and storms, and desolation, its groans and death, 
— how dark, how woful, how deadly ; he can almost see 
through it. Dangers yet stand as thick around him as ser- 
ried soldiers, but a glimmering comes through the strait 
and narrow way that he is steadfastly pursuing, which be- 
speaks a blue sky, peaceful fields, and the light of heaven. 

With these encouragements we are invited to assemble 
in our respective places of worship, and offer thanksgiving 
to God for His mercy in preserving our national existence 
against the insurgent rebels, who have been waging a civil 
war against the government of the United States for its 
overthrow. And surely no locality is more worthy of our 



476 THE END NEAR. 

assemblage than this. We are within a few rods of the 
spot where John Adams declared that the openiDg gun of 
the Revolution was fired. Where a young minister, in a 
city subject to a foreign power, and with all its wealth, 
office, and influence supporting that power, dared to preach 
a sermon on the Higher Law, defying that power in the 
name of his God, and first starting in the mind of this city 
the doctrine of Independence. To the same mind, was due 
the other focus of our orbit, — the body of which Indepen- 
dence was the soul, — Union. Both came from one brain, 
and his a minister's. For while meditating upon the discon- 
nected, and hence useless efforts, of the patriots of Massa- 
chusetts and Virginia, New York and South Carolina, as he 
was preparing to go to an association of ministers, he 
thought, Why not have such an association of patriots? why 
not of provinces ? He instantly wrote his thought to John 
Adams, and the Union then first began to be. . With such 
auspices hanging over us, we cannot be untimely in con- 
sidering the great duties of the hour as Christians, as 
men. 

But what proof have you, some half-hearted, perhaps 
some over-cautious soul may say, that the night is far spent ? 
Are not the rebels yet firm and undaunted ? Are they not 
armed, and organized, and active ? Have they not posses- 
sion of their original capital ? Do they not yet rule in 
Charleston ? What are your signs of promise ? Let us 
put them into one bird's-eye view. 

Suppose Jefferson Davis had been able to carry out his 
boasted threat at Montgomery before the opening of the 
war — that if war should come from secession, it was the 
North and not the South should be its theatre; we ''should 
smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Suppose 
that in carrying out this threat New York had been taken 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 477 

by his armies within a year after that time, and had been 
kept in their grasp firmly to this hour, while two South 
Carolina generals had been its actual governors ; suppose 
the Mississippi had been opened to its fountain, and St. 
Louis, and all the cities were in their hands ; suppose an 
army had penetrated into New England, and secured Spring- 
field, the center of our railroads, and the chief depot of our 
military stores, and had annihilated, by the same act, the 
last but one of our great armies ; suppose that every one 
of our seaports was captured or invested, leaving only New 
London as a place where we could smuggle in a few of the 
necessary supplies for our army and our people ; suppose 
that Boston was half burned, — Fort Warren a chaotic mass 
of brick and stone, — the lower half of this city, including 
its shipping, warehouses, and stores, up even to Tre- 
mont Street, all in ashes and abandoned, and that daily in 
our more retired portions the deadly shell should drop from 
the enemy's vessels which filled the outer harbor ; suppose 
that gold had long since ceased to be an article of trade, 
and that our greenbacks had become so worthless that it 
took eight hundred dollars of them to buy a barrel of flour ; 
suppose that Washington had been held in close siege for 
four months ; that Lee had earned out his contemplated 
invasion of the North last spring ; that on May last he had 
drawn Grant back from Fredericksburg, from Culpepper, 
from Manassas, and had thrown his troops around the south, 
and east, and north of the city, leaving only the west open; 
suppose that he had clung to this position ever since the 
middle of May, now throwing himself on one side of the 
Potomac and now the other, and, at last, by a sudden move- 
ment, had got possession of the Baltimore Railroad, from 
which assaults after assaults on our part were unable io dis- 
lodge him ; suppose, that provisions had risen in that city 
to famine prices, and even then our people, and our soldiers 
too, had scarcely nothing to eat : should we not think our 



478 THE END XEAR. 

end was near? Should we not prepare to accept any terms 
our victors might demand ? This is an exact picture of 
the rebellion to-day. Its state is even worse than this. 
Three of their States are supporting the administration 
through military governments — Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
Louisiana. Only Eastern Virginia and the Carolinas are 
able to retain any efficient hold upon their peoples. 

If every north-west State was thus ruled by military gov- 
ernors of the confederacy ; if Pennsylvania and half of New 
York were theirs ; if only Massachusetts, eastern New York, 
and the State between were ours, the parallel would be 
complete. Study your map, and your faith and patriotism 
will have free course and be glorified. 

But if the night be so far spent, what is our duty ? 

1. Not to desert our posts. The morning is coming, but 
is not come. Should the watchmen engaged in protecting 
your houses and stores desert their posts at the first gray 
glimpse of dawn, your city would instantly swarm with 
thieves and murderers. They would rush out from their 
dens and coverts, whither they had been driven by your pro- 
tectors, and lay waste and destroy. So if we slacken our 
arm, if we withdraw our troops, if, as some traitorously 
advise, we throw open our doors to their murderous feet, 
instantly they would swarm from every hole in the South 
where they are now shut up. They would rush to the Po- 
tomac. They would slay every Union man, white and black, 
in that whole region. They would open their ports to for- 
eign emissaries and associates. They would assume their 
old defiant attitude with yet greater defiance, while we, 
craven of spirit, would hide ourselves from them, as we 
should from armed rioters, if they had possession of this 
city. 

No, the only duty is to fight it out on this line, if it takes 
the whole century. There is no release in this war except 
by the death of its cause. There should be no relaxing of 



THE CAPTURE OE ATLANTA. 479 

our efforts to compel their complete subjugation. The army 
should overflow with soldiers. The exhausted fighters, 
through this long, long night, should be encouraged by the 
faces of their friends thronging to their support. The young 
men, untrammeled by family cares and duties, should fly to 
the field. When Burgoyne seemed almost in the net which 
Schuyler, and afterwards Gates, had prepared for him, he 
was intrapped only by the multitudes that flocked to their 
banners. So when their last great army is penned up in 
its first stronghold, everybody that can leave his home and 
handle a musket should swell the heroic ranks, and see this 
huge, amorphous -sin die its eternal death. 

2. But our duty is also to support the government 
with our voice and vote at home. Every presidential elec- 
tion is important, but none has been so important as this. 
It was vastly important that the gigantic slave power should 
be opposed by the people ; that the great national uprising 
should be indeed an uprising, not a mere rolling over in sin- 
ful and slavish slumber. Therefore all the preliminary con- 
tests for liberty for twenty years were vital. It was vital 
that Birney should be nominated and voted for in 1840. 
Unless the child was born, it could never become the strong 
man. Unless the sentiment against slavery had condensed 
itself into political form then, it might not have conquered 
yet. For four presidential canvasses it was the subject of 
insult, of scorn, of neglect, and in the minds of few wise 
enemies, of fear. Said John C. Calhoun, " While aboli- 
tionism contents itself with talking, we are in no danger ; 
when it begins to vote, we are dead." Yet not till 1856, 
till arrogance after arrogance had been successfully exhib- 
ited by the slave power, till the right of petition in Con- 
gress, freedom of the mails, rights of citizens in Southern 
ports, rights of pleadings of State against State in the 
Supreme Courts, the freedom of territory north of 36° 30' 
beyond the Mississippi, the right of fugitives from slavery 



480 THE END NEAK. 

to their liberty, the rights of any man of any portion of 
African descent in the courts of the nation, had been all 
stricken down, a foreign state invaded and dismembered in 
the interests of slavery, members of Congress smitten for 
declaiming against the monster, a war waged with all the 
powers of the government for the subjugation of liberty in 
Kansas ; not until these assaults on the national ideas and 
life had been committed could the people be sufficiently 
aroused to see their sin and their danger, and to de- 
clare their purpose to return to the old paths. Even then 
they failed to see it. Many honest men hoped for other 
ways of escape than by confronting in battle of leagued and 
banded States. 

Another four years in the wilderness and Canaan was 
reached, the Jordan crossed, and the tribes of God in pos- 
session of His inheritance. Then came the long and bloody 
struggle, as with them after the passage of the Jordan. 
Four years of war and we appear again in our tribes to 
choose our ruler. Some say, " Enough of war ! Let us 
make peace with the rebels. Any peace that will insure 
Union, or that will not." Joshua and his lieutenants are 
objects of unspeakable abuse. What shall the people do ? 
Shall they elect a chieftain who will make terms with the 
idolatrous Canaanites, whereby one half of the territory 
wrested from them shall be restored to their control ? Shall 
we give up Jericho, so miraculously conferred upon us, or 
Ai, for which we so bloodily contended, or Bethoron, down 
whose steeps we pursued the hostile chiefs in rout and 
ruin, while God held the light for us in the heavens to 
enable us to complete the work ? Shall we restore the 
Gibeonites, to whom we have made solemn pledges, into the 
hands of their enemies, who will reduce them to bondage, 
and waste them with furious slaughter? "0, yes. Depose 
Joshua, and elect some one of those who cowardly advised 
against taking possession of the land. Depose him, and 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 481 

appoint one who shall secure for us a dishonorable peace 
and an everlasting war. 77 

In such a crisis every lover of God and his country has 
but one duty to do. He must stand by Joshua. Treason 
in the camp is as fatal as the foe on the field. He must 
bear aloft the banner of liberty and righteousness, unfurled 
twenty-four years ago, and never to be laid up till the vic- 
tory is entirely won. 

Some object to the political canvass at such an hour. 
Yet it has its advantages. It allows the country to say 
whether it has confidence in its own principles and purposes. 
Had the vote been taken in this nation in 1*1*19, at the darkest 
moment in our history, after three years of almost unsuc- 
cessful war, whether George Washington should still head 
the armies of the republic, and John Adams its Congress, 
it would have encouraged them more than a score of victo- 
ries, and paralyzed the arm of their oppressors more than a 
hundred defeats, to have had the people, by an immense 
majority, declare their purpose to support their heroic lead- 
ers unto the end. So will it inspire our soldiers with fresh 
courage, stagger our enemies more than the loss of ten 
Atlantas, and cause the whole world to settle down into 
the conviction of the intense earnestness of the American 
people, if we reelect our leader to the seat he has so ably 
filled. 

The Church should unite as one man in this exigency. 
Prayers should go up daily for success in this election. 
Her salvation depends upon her faithfulness. She has had 
much to do with this revival of pure and undefiled religion. 
From the beginning her children have been found fighting 
for the cause of liberty and of man. She did more to de- 
velop the sentiment that was crowned in the elections of 
1860 than all other influences combined. The great revival 
was a fitting and necessary prelude to that great election. 
Let her continue faithful and the work is done. Let her 
31 



482 THE END NEAR. 

once more march to the ballot-box, an army of Christ, with 
the banners of the Cross, and deposit, as she can, a million 
of votes for her true representative, and she will give the 
last blow to the reeling fiend ; she will keep, where she 
belongs, in the fore front of the nation in civil and social 
righteousness ; she will be stronger to assail the fortress of 
religious error, and to effect the renewal of the land in 
holiness. 

If she refuses this dut}^ if she listens to the siren voice 
of a seductive but fatal peace, if she is beguiled from her 
steadfastness by those who hate her with an unblushing and 
ferocious hatred, who in every bar-room and gambling hole 
throughout the land to-day are heaping upon her all manner 
of curses and revilings because she is true to the cause of 
God and man — if she shall league with these, her fate is 
sealed. She goes down, with Jerusalem of old, into dust and 
desolation. Her enemies mock at her, crucify her, kill her, 
and God will grant her no resurrection. The Church must 
do her duty in this hour, and that duty is, by every righteous 
means in her power to secure the reelection of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

3. But a third duty of the hour is, to maintain the whole 
truth as to the questions at issue in this conflict. The 
morning cometh, but a higher morning is also breaking upon 
the land. When the women were hastening to Christ's 
sepulcher on the morning of His resurrection there was a 
rosy flush upon the Mount of Olives. How gay and glad 
danced the flames upon the distant hills of Moab ! How 
bright the face of Nature ! Trees were rustling in their new 
spring robes, flowers were pouring- forth their fragrance on 
the balmy air, birds were filling the sky with their matin 
music. They, perhaps, felt that the outward glory did not 
well conform with the inner darkness. The sun should still 
be darkened. It should rise every day in the garments of 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 483 

mourning which it assumed in those dread hours of the 
previous Friday. But when they come to the sepulcher 
and find the stone rolled away, and the Savior arisen, they 
see with their souls' eyes why the sun seems to dance in 
the heavens, and the birds emulate the angelic chorus, and 
trees drop balm, while 

" Flowers laugh before them in their beds 
And fragrance in their footing treads." 

Another morn had broke upon the world, a divine, eternal 
morn, of which this earthly and perishable one was but a 
feeble emblem. 

So if we will lift up our eyes we shall behold another 
morning breaking on the land. The Dayspring from on 
high is visiting us. Peace comes with healing on her wings. 
There might have been a peace full of infamy, full of calam- 
ity, a peace that came from cowardice, that created disunion, 
that was sure to be the fruitful parent of unceasing war. 
Not such shall we see if faithful to the new sun that is now 
arising. This day began to dawn more than two years ago. 
When the President, in March, 1862, issued a proclamation 
to the Border States, urging them to abolish slavery with 
national compensation, and informed them that in case they 
did not, its abolishment might come from another quarter, 
then the day began to break ; that was the first gray ray 
which pierced the involving dark. When six months later 
he announced emancipation in all the rebellious region, if, 
after, three months' warning, they did not return to their 
allegiance, the grayness became golden. The east was 
ruddy with the rushing dawn. And when, on January 1, 
1863, he proclaimed their liberty in all the land, and re- 
quired the army to welcome them as such, the first segment 
of the solid globe of fire appeared above the horizon. The 
enrolling and arming of the slave, the abolishment of in- 



484 THE EKD NEAR. 

vidious distinctions of color in courts and cars, are further 
evidences that a true and glorious day is breaking ; a day 
that no night shall follow, and in which peace shall 
be one with brotherhood ; in which true democracy, the 
rights and fraternity of all men, shall be universally recog- 
nized and practiced. When there shall be no school to 
prepare white men to rule colored regiments, but such regi- 
ments shall be abolished, and men, without distinction of 
color, rule and serve in all the armies of the republic ; when 
there shall be no white nor colored churches, but all in Christ 
shall be one in Christ. 

This morning is dawning. Thanks be to God. This is 
more than the victory of Farragut and Sherman. Far 
greater *s he that conquereth his own spirit than he that 
taketh a city. If the nation shall conquer its own proud, 
rebellious, unbrotherly spirit, it will do a far greater work 
for God and man than if it should annihilate every hostile 
power in the world. We know that work is the most dif- 
ficult. Let us address ourselves to it, therefore, the most 
diligentty. 

While we do the first and second works, supporting the 
army and the government, let us not leave this undone. 

Let us labor and pray that the only divine morning may 
indeed come. Our fathers had a rosy peace, but it was only 
for an earthly day. We found twilight fast gathering over 
it when this generation appeared on the stage of action. That 
disastrous twilight deepened into night — a night of storm 
and darkness ; a night like that in Egypt, in which every 
household has sent forth exceeding great and bitter cries, for 
in every house has been one dead. We are emerging again 
into day. Shall it be like the other, a day of earth, stormy and 
brief? or shall it be a day of heaven, calm and eternal ? That 
depends entirely on our faithfulness to the principles of God 
and His Gospel. Mr. Seward declares that if peace comes, 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 485 

slavery, as well as all other questions, must adjust them- 
selves to that basis. If by this he means that this nation is 
not to uproot slavery, and caste, its tap-root, then will our 
peace be brief and worthless. If by it he means that these 
duties must go forward under the new conditions, it is well, 
but go forward they must, or we go backward. Our fathers 
made much more rapid progress in the storms of the Revolu- 
tion than in the peace that followed. We must beware that 
our morning is not darker than our night. Fearful as that 
has been, the eye of God has shone upon us, as it did upon 
the Israelites in the tempest's gloom and destruction of the 
Red Sea. We have 

" Touched God's right hand in the darkness, # 
And been lifted up and strengthened." 

Go forward in that strength. Cleanse yourselves, and 
prepare for the duties of the coming day. The light is not 
given as a luxury, not for idle saunterings, but for labor. 
Man goeth forth to his work when the sun comes out of 
his chambers. We have a great and glorious work to do. 
We have our land to cleanse from its sins, to deliver from 
its enemies, to make the glory of all lands. We must 
educate this people so that all nations may seek after the 
same likeness and image. We must take the foreigners, who 
are rushing by thousands, and will by tens of thousands, to 
our shores, and inspire them with the gospel of truth and 
brotherhood. 

The war draws near its end. In forty days, we might 
almost say, and Richmond shall be overthrown. With her 
vanishes the last rebellious army from the field, and the last 
hope from their breast. As Lord North, when tidings were 
brought to him of the capture of Cornwallis, threw up his 
arms as though a bullet had pierced his breast, and pacing 
up and down his apartments, exclaimed wildly, " God, it 



486 THE END NEAR. 

is all over!" thus will the grand instigator of this unlaw- 
ful war cry out as he flees from his proud citadel to hide 
his dishonored head when the conquering armies of Union 
and Liberty shall enter Richmond. 

See to it that the third word is added, — Fraternity, — or, 
as sure as there is a God in heaven, there will be another war 
in America; a war more fierce, more bloody, more fatal than 
this — a war of races and of extermination. Justice and 
brotherly kindness can alone prevent this sun from going 
down. They can. Let us so live and labor that the peace 
and the nation shall be perpetual, universal, celestial. 

It may seem improper to prognosticate evil when the 
good is breaking upon us, but truth is truth. Our fathers 
would have cried out at him who, on the day of Thanksgiv- 
ing for the capture of Yorktown, had declared that unless 
they abolished slavery there would come upon their children 
a fiercer war than the one from whose red waves they saw 
themselves emerging. And yet he would have told them 
the truth. Liberty for all has had to be purchased at a 
great price, because they would not then bestow it freely 
upon all. So our war has established universal liberty. I 
have not the least doubt that slavery, under no subterfuge 
of compromise and complicity, can long live. Should the 
rebels succeed, should Mr. Lincoln be defeated, slavery 
must die. But Fraternity, the oneness of man, is yet an 
unsolved problem in this land. Our hearts still hate our 
brothers — still we thrust them from our arms. We have 
not half completed this work of regeneration. We have 
hardly begun it. 

It must be begun, it must be completed, or a future war 
grows out of the seeds of an imperfect peace. We must 
conquer our prejudices, or God will again cast us into weak- 
ness and agony. Be assured that this word is of God. It 
is written on every page of His Bible, on every page of 



THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 487 

history, on every promise of the future. Man can exist on 
the earth happily, righteously, divinely, only as one. Five 
millions of our brethren held insoluble amid thirty or one 
hundred millions, can only disturb, and, unless cured, will 
destroy the body politic. They must be treated without 
special consideration or contempt ; without special exclu- 
sion or inclusion. The sons of the first parent differed : 
the older despised the younger, and hence death and dis- 
union to this hour. We must go back to Eden. We must 
say, and show it as a natural trait, — 

" That every person who shall lift again 
His tongue against his hrother, on his forehead 
Shall wear forevermore the curse of Cain." 

Gird on, then, the armor for God and your Country — for 
Liberty, and Union, and Fraternity. The day breaks, the 
shadows flee. Ere long the last grand note of triumph will 
fly through the land, over the seas. The dragon is broken 
in the midst of the waters. Slavery is gone down forever. 
The power that four years ago defied the whole world — 
that said to America, " Submit, or we will destroy you ; " 
that said to Europe, " Acknowledge us or your people 
shall starve in their huts, your factories be silent, your 
ships rot at you wharves ; " that said to itself, ff We 
have climbed to the top of human sovereignty — the South, 
the East, the West, the North are ours." Where is it 
now ? " Perished from the earth it has so long so griev- 
iously cursed." Hallelujah ! the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth ! 

One more blow on his accursed brow by our soldiers, one 
more by every patriot arm at the ballot-box, and he lies dead 
forever. He enters history, cruel as the burning Moloch, 
vile as the wanton Baal, proud as the imperious Satan, 



488 THE END KEAK. 

the demon of America cast out forever from the earth, 
thrust down forever to the lowest hell. 

"Up then, in Freedom's manly part, 

From gray-beard eld to fiery youth, 
And on the nation's naked heart 

Scatter the burning coals of Truth. 
Now break the chain — the yoke remove, 

And smite to earth oppression's rod, 
With those mild arms of Truth and Love, 

Made mighty through the living God." 



THE WONDEBFUL TEAE.* 



The tear of the right haxd of the Most High." — Ps. lxxiii. 10. 




HE year 1666 was long known in British annals as 
Annus Mirabilis, The Wonderful Year. Dryden 
celebrated its marvels in one of his ablest poems. 
Yet its wonders consisted solely in a few forgot- 
ten victories over the Dutch and the great fire of London. 
Much more will the year 1864 stand forth in our annals as 
wonderful. 

The year naturally divides itself in two parts — our prog- 
ress in arms, our greater progress in principles. Let us 
first consider the least, though the seeming greatest. 

I. Our military progress is a cause of the highest national 
exultation. One year ago our situation was far inferior to 
what it is to-day. We held, under menace, Chattanooga 
and the Rapidan. We were beleaguered in Knoxville ; a 
proud and confident foe ranged through the valleys of East 
Tennessee. We were holding foolish revelry in New Or- 
leans, while the enemy, growling and hungry, were prowl- 
ing through the whole interior, and often upon the banks 



* A sermon preached in Boston, January 1, 1865. 



(489) 



490 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

of the Mississippi, looked in contemptuously upon our silly 
junketings. Great activity prevailed through the hostile 
region in the recruiting of their armies and the replenishing 
of their military stores. Never were their ranks so full ; 
never their cannon so numerous ; never their muskets so 
many and so good ; never their spirits or their stock so 
high. They were sure that this year would conclude the 
war in their favor. Their friends, here and abroad, were 
not the less sanguine. Six times had we sought, under as 
many different commanders, to break the line of their Rich- 
mond approaches, and each time had been bloodil} T repulsed. 

The opening of the year was disastrous. Our gay and 
festive army at New Orleans abandoned its gayety and fes- 
tivity for a season, and sailed pompously out, down the 
coast of Texas, only to sail back again, shorn of their 
pomp, but not their vanity. Again they essay a land attack; 
and, like Braddock in the equipage of a muster field, with 
trains of cotton speculators in their ranks or rear, they 
march into the deadly ambuscades of Shreveport. The 
scattered fragments pick their perilous way back to the 
hilarious city, and the conquered hero comes North to 
receive an ovation from his exultant fellow-citizens. At 
Chattanooga the results were equally disastrous. We had 
sought to move out southward, only to be surprised and 
nearly annihilated at the bloody streamlet of Chickamauga. 
One wing and one chieftain alone preserved us from com- 
plete destruction — the same chief that has just crowned 
himself with fresh and unfading glory in his utter annihi- 
lation at Nashville of the same army that there so nearly 
routed ours. 

Driven back into Chattanooga, the enemy had followed, 
and the hills about the city were covered with the insulting 
foe. The railroads were under their control; means of 
subsistence had failed ; their shot and shell dropped daily 
into a defenceless camp, and the extinction of the army of 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 491 

the Cumberland was daily expected — would soon have been 
consummated. From this calamity General Grant had saved 
us ; and under his bold generals had stormed the hights of 
Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, and forced the foe 
back from the bloody fords of Chickamauga. Here he had 
paused ; and here only did a gleam of sunshine glitter upon 
our bayonets till more than a third of the year had passed. 
Nay, so thick was the darkness, that as late as May our 
fortified posts on the North Carolina coast were attacked, 
and all but Newbern captured. Forrest made sacred forever 
the waters of the Mississippi with the blood of our massa- 
cred soldiers — blood that, flowing from dusky veins, gave 
the stream the holy redness of our flag of national freedom 
and fraternity the holier redness of the heart of Christ. 
With insolent ferocity he raged through Kentucky, and 
made good his boast that he would water his horses in the 
Ohio. Of our three armies, one was annihilated, one barely 
holding its own in the heart of the rebellion, and the last, 
long considered the first, held at bay in the same spot, 
beyond which it had essayed for three years in vain to 
march. 

Now witness the contrast. In these eight months we 
have thrown our army upon Richmond, and held it there. 
Steadily have we pushed our lines around the fated city, 
and the line once formed has never been broken. In a 
series of battles that have had no equal on this continent, 
and no superior on any, have we won our way to its gates. 
Its chief line of communication is sundered. Its army, cooped 
up within its walls, is constrained to helplessly behold the 
overthrow of its coordinate armies in other sections of the 
field. Its general, by far the greatest, almost the only 
great one in its service, looks painfully on the desolations 
that are made in the very heart of his territory, but with 
no power to stay the march of the desolator. He awaits 
in sullen silence his own steadily approaching doom. The 



492 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

troops that lay in Chattanooga, helpless under the fiery 
shower from the surrounding summits, now look upon the 
blue sea, in possession of the second commercial seat of the 
rebellion, after a fierce and deadly march of over two hun- 
dred miles, to the seat of the armaments and military fac- 
tories of the rebellion, and with a subsequent march of three 
hundred miles, most agreeable, most peaceful, most tri- 
umphant. 

The deluded foe seeks to take vengeance by recapturing 
one of its own cities, that it now with a prophetic instinct 
calls ours, only to meet with complete and everlasting de- 
struction. Thus rests the field to-day. One repulse alone 
shades the picture — that of Wilmington ; offset, however, 
by the victory of Farragut at Mobile, who shows that on 
the sea, as with England in the days of Nelson, we have 
one captain that always conquers. To him the two re- 
maining posts of the rebellion may bow, as the two greatest 
have, unless Sherman captures them by land as he has 
Savannah. 

In this military review we should not fail to see the dif- 
ferent status of affairs between this winter and last, in the 
langour that invades the spirits and the purposes of the re- 
bellious leaders. A year ago they were alive with activity. 
The conscription was everywhere gathering in its strong 
grasp their idle or cowardly subjects. They were a unit 
in purpose and in action. To-day distractions rule their 
counsels, inactivity pervades their movements ; no new 
levies, except those of slaves ; no new armies springing out 
the earth to cope with our victorious legions ; the faintness, 
the chill, the tremor, the horror of death invade this huge, 
tyrannic frame. The Giant Despair rages in blind passion, 
and staggers to his eternal doom. 

How dark was the prospect last May. How impenetra- 
ble the gloom of last August — the darkest month of the 
whole war. How wonderful the brightness of this new 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 493 

year's morning. Surely must we exclaim, with most hum- 
ble, most grateful hearts, Thy right arm, Lord, hath gotten 
us the victory ! 

II. But other and greater victories await our attention. 
The triumphs of principles surpass those of arms. 

One of the most important battles ever fought among 
men was waged in the late Presidential contest. Over 
mjnriads of leagues the combatants contended. Three thou- 
sand miles, from ocean to ocean, the line of battle stretched. 
Three millions of soldiers were in the field. The gage of 
battle was equally grand. Not only the life of a nation, 
but the life of humanity, hung trembling in the balance of 
the hour. Milton's imagination is of the sublimest order ; 
yet his description of the war in heaven excels not the 
plain statements of the actual events that have transpired 
in America to-day. Were he living at this hour, and in 
this land, in his moments of repose from the duties to which 
his patriot soul would devote itself, his pen would revel 
in the grandeur of the scenes that have moved forward 
under our half-apprehensive eyes. It will assume its place 
in history as one of the last turning points, may we hope, 
in that divine highway which is being cast up among men, 
and which ends in the 

" Shining table-lands, 
To which our God himself is moon and sun." 

1. Its importance will be the more clearly recognized 
by contrasting it with its predecessor — the election of 
eighteen hundred and sixty. In every respect will it be 
found superior. 

(1.) It is superior in the circumstances under which they 
were fought. Then the land was in apparent peace. Quiet 
possessed its borders. No tramp of armed men resounded 
through our streets. No cannon shook the skies. No 
groans of wounded multitudes made the heavens mourn. 



494 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

No maimed thousands limped about our doors. No weeds 
of hopeless sorrow shadowed the souls of mothers, wives, 
and children, " grieving over the unreturning brave." No 
dreams of war, horrid war, affrighted men's hearts. Here 
and there a fevered vision might fancy it discerned it. 
Here and there, possibly, a clearer eye did behold it. But 
none imagined that it would assume such a fearful magni- 
tude. The wildest dreamer did not so fill the land with 
blood. Among peaceful fields, from the Rio Grande to the 
St. John's, the discussion went forward, and the decision 
was made. Shotless cannon announced the victory, and 
tearless eyes overflowed with joy. 

This battle was fought in the midst of gloom and anguish. 
Blood, and fire, and vapor of cannon smoke filled all the 
air. Hundreds of thousands of our bravest and best had 
entered untimely graves. Hundreds of thousands breathed 
painful breath, eating the bread of affliction in Southern 
prisons, lying torn and shattered on the nation's couches, 
or wandering among us, with riven frames and pallid faces, 
fragments of their then vigorous and manly selves. Crape 
covered many a heart that then was bright with bridal 
bloom. Children cried for fathers, whose bones unburied 
looked up to the pitying and avenging eyes of God. Moth- 
ers by scores of thousands had become Naomis and Rachels. 
Wives by tens of thousands were going down in sorrow to 
the grave. What a land ! lamentation and mourning, the 
screaming ball and the wailing household joining in doleful 
miserere. Starvation over hundreds of miles that then 
flourished in plenty ; and worse than all, brothers aiming 
the rifle at each other's hearts that then were dwelling 
together in unity. 

Can we say that an election proceeding under such cir- 
cumstances is superior to its peaceful predecessor ? Yes, 
even in these very elements is it superior. Look beneath 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 495 

the calm exterior of the former campaign. Over all that 
vast domain, where now war rolls its bloody surges, rested 
the gloom of hell. Millions of delicate women wrought 
daily in the field without reward except the lash of the 
master, and were nightly scourged to most horrible service. 
Millions of men were subject to like unmitigated toil, and 
to hardly less agony unutterable as they were compelled 
helplessly to behold their dearest selves the dreadful victims 
of their oppressors' lust. Everywhere the auction-block 
was mounted by Christians, while demons in human guise 
discussed their points, as they would those of beasts, but 
with a ferocity of passion such as no legitimate and lower 
merchandise awakens. The husband and wife, whom God 
had joined together, man rent asunder. The babe was torn 
from its mother's breast. The saintly maiden was cast into 
the lecherous clutch of a fiendish buyer ; and all this was 
sanctioned by the professed Church of Jesus Christ. Dea- 
cons, vestrymen, and class-leaders, ministers, and bishops, 
vied with the rumseller, the gambler, and the avowed liber- 
tine, in this traffic of hell. Not of the Father's house, but 
of the Father's sons and daughters, did they make merchan- 
dise. All churches ran together to see which should soonest 
reach this goal of Satan. They all alike threw off the im- 
pediments of Northern conscience and communion, that they 
might the more easily surpass their rivals in their diabolic 
race. Bishop Polk and Bishop Pierce, Dr. Palmer and Dr. 
Manly, led their several hosts down the steep places of sin 
into this gulf of perdition. They yet retained the form and 
likeness of sacramental hosts of God's elect, though with 
no divine presence within them, and only divine justice 
overhanging them. As we saw their seemingly sacred 
forms, Abdiel's exclamation at Satan's yet undimmed glory 
leaped from our lips. 

" O Heaven ! that such resemblance of the highest 
Should yet remain, where faith and fealty 



496 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

Remain not ! Wherefore should not strength and might 
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove 
Where boldest, though to sight unconquerable ? " 

They have thus proved. Their brightness, their strength, 
their good name is gone. Those then puissant congrega- 
tions and commanders have sunk into as complete infamy, 
and will into as complete destruction, as the less apostate 
churches of Ephraim and Jerusalem. 

Is not this election preferable ? The auction-block has 
rarely exhibited its atrocities since the fires of heaven fell 
upon this hideous Sodom, whose very Lots had become par- 
takers of its vilest sins. Rare have been the forced sepa- 
rations, then so frequent ; rare the lash, then so constant ; 
rare the unspeakable shames, then so universal and so awful. 
God has suspended these atrocities, even where he has not 
yet led them into liberty. Their Pharaohs have paused in 
their career of abominations where they have not yet let 
them go. Baleful as were the attendant miseries of the 
last election, they were blessed as the smile of heaven in 
comparison with the agonies that then rolled up from half 
the land in a wail that made the angels weep. 

(2.) In another respect it may be said this last election 
is inferior to its predecessor. " That was held freely over 
the whole country, this only over a fraction. " But this 
statement is not true. This was a freer and fuller expres- 
sion of the people's sentiments than was that. 

In one half of the land four years ago, no man could 
have deposited a ballot for Mr. Lincoln without the sacrifice 
of his life. Freedom of the ballot was as much precluded 
from the States below the Ohio as freedom of men. There 
was immeasurably greater liberty of voting at this election 
in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, than was 
ever known there before. A friend in Baltimore told me 
that it was at the risk of his life that he gave his vote for 
Mr. Lincoln in 1860. Now that city rolls up a heavier vote 



SECOND ELECTION OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 497 

for him than even Boston. The alarm cry of our regiments 
at the Relay, fearing midnight assault, was " Baltimore ; " 
the midnoon shout of joy to-day is " Baltimore ; " so swift 
tread time and truth. 

(3.) The late campaign is superior to the former in its 
relation to the great evil against which they fought. Both 
are but parts of one stupendous whole. Both are steps of 
God in His march through the earth. Each involves more 
than it formally asserts. Their declarations of policy and 
purpose show how great has been our progress in this brief 
hour of time. 

Four years ago, the highest we could reach was the non- 
extension of slavery. To touch it where it ruled, was de- 
clared impossible. To lift the fetters from a single neck, to 
even express sympathy for those who wore them, was for- 
bidden. Our unpeopled territories should be free. So said 
only a minority of the people, and they not its representa- 
tives of fashion, wealth, or influence. To-day, by a great 
majority, the people say, "No more slavery. If the Con- 
stitution does not forbid it, amend the Constitution. Not 
territories alone but States, not wilds but cities, shall be 
cleansed of this plague. The nation shall be pure." How 
vast that stride ! Then defensive, almost in a posture of 
entreaty, now aggressive and defiant, liberty wraps her 
starry robe about her, and marches forth to the sovereignty 
of the continent. 

We saw the gradual approach of the sun of Liberty. We 
knew that it was the first blow slavery had received from 
the arm of the people, and that from it she could not re- 
cover. Though it might fight long and die hard, die it 
must ; yet we could not believe it would die so soon. 

The first word spoken against it doomed it. Though 

Church and nation subsided into silence and submission, still 

that word lived. It broke forth with new power through 

the pen of Mr. Garrison. And for the first time since he 

32 



498 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

leaped into this conflict with all the power and populace 
of the land, could the great revivalist of* this reform approve 
the nomination and aid in the election of a chief magistrate. 
He ought to have been on the electoral ticket of Massachu- 
setts with Edward Everett. The dullest eye would then 
have seen the mighty change. The two antagonists of 
Mr. Lincoln, each from an opposite side, the one the con- 
servative candidate for the vice-presidency, the other the 
most radical denouncer of any presidency upon such a Con- 
stitution, the extreme lover of the Union and the extreme 
lover of liberty unite together, to uphold both of these great 
pillars of our national temple. 

(4.) This conflict is greater than its predecessor in its 
effect upon foreign nations. The former election was local 
and unknown. It was not seen across the Atlantic save 
by a few discerning eyes. The masses, whether titled or 
without a surname, whether in robes or rags, saw nothing. 
To-day they see nothing else. The quarrels of Europe were 
unseen. Their international politics, once so grand to their 
unwidened vision, appear as the battles or diplomacies of 
pigmies. What matters it if Denmark is disparted, or Italy 
united, or Poland subjugated ? They are baubles of an 
hour, tiny eddies of the great current whose gulf stream 
sweeps across America. Even the pregnant movements of 
this continent, the imperializing of Mexico, and nationalizing 
of British America, are unlike unnoticed. Europe pays no 
regard to them. "What is that rent and bleeding Democracy 
going to do?" cry these pallid kings. "Will she assert her 
purpose to fight it out on that line, if it takes a century, 
or will she succumb to her foes and her wounds, and, sink- 
ing amid the waves her blood has reddened, leave the ocean 
of the future free to our monarchic sails ? " 

"Will she," cry their half-despairing subjects, "will she 
abandon the struggle for our rights no less than for her 
own ? Will she be slain in her own home by her own 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 499 

children, the most horrible matricide in history ? And shall 
we weep in unutterable sorrow the death of her who might 
have been the mother of free empires wide as the earth, 
enduring as time ? " How they gathered to their shores ! 
How they fastened greedy eyes upon our great controversy! 
How they prayed for our salvation ! How they leaped for 
joy at the glorious result ! We were exultant, but with no 
such happiness as beat in every peasant breast of Europe. 

As the first election awoke the greatest exultation in the 
cabins of Southern slaves, so has this in the hardly less 
degraded cabins of England, and Scotland, and France, and 
Germany. It carries dismay and death to kings and their 
minions, life and light to their down-trodden brethren. Never 
before did such a message cut the skies. 

2. But the greatness of this election is better seen by a 
more direct contemplation of its actual results. Not alone 
in the questionable superiority of war over slavery, or pub- 
licity over privacy, does it deserve its title of great, but by 
the principles which, through it, have become the unalterable 
masters of the nation, the certain masters of the world. 

Three ideas essential to the consummation of the divine 
desire in Christ with respect to man have been established 
by this decree of America. 

(1.) The first is that of Union. The debate on that topic 
is closed. Till this year it has always been questionable 
whether the Union would endure. It was effected with 
great difficulty. It was imperiled at the start by the wrong- 
ful demands of some of the States, by the wrongful pride 
of others. 

When effected by the partial, and, as we have too pain- 
fully learned, by the fatal surrender of principle, it was still 
expected to survive but for a season. In 1198, within ten 
years after its organization, the Virginia Democrats set State 
sovereignty above the Union. The resolutions of Kentucky, 
which were written by Thomas Jefferson, became the serpent 



500 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

that the Satan of slavery entered and seduced the new-born 
nation from her rectitude. To what depths of weakness 
and disgrace it brought her, the closing hours of Mr. Bu- 
chanan's administration have written with the point of a 
diamond. Under their formulary the nation saw her forts 
and armaments seized, her power triumphantly defied in her 
own domain, and herself the scorn and derision of every 
petty princedom. 

Not only did resolutions thus early foreshadow this strug- 
gle ; the purpose to sever the Union was itself avowed in 
the same century that witnessed its birth. It assumed many 
forms, and was never formally passed upon by the people, 
unless the reelection of Andrew Jackson, by a great major- 
ity, after his suppression of South Carolina nullification, was 
an expression of their hostility to it. If so, the determination 
still lived. It flourished more and more. The re-awaken- 
ing of the national conscience to the great evil of slavery, 
gave its supporters the pretext they desired. For thirty 
years they waged the ceaseless strife. At. last, when the 
people had mildly said to this iniquity, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, but no further/' they sprang to arms. " The United 
States/' cries Keitt, of South Carolina, in a jubilant voice 
to his rebellious associates, " are scattered unto a thousand 
fragments." "Disunion forever !" reecho the leagued trai- 
tors, as they hold by the throat eleven States, more than 
a third of her commonwealths, more than a half of her 
domain. 

To this shout of disruption, the nation with a universal 
voice, responded, " Not yet ! " 

" Not yet the hour is nigh, when they 
"Who deep in Eld's dim twilight sit, 
Earth's valiant kings, shall rise and say, 

' Proud country, welcome to the pit ! 
So soon art thou, like us, brought low?' 
No, sullen group of shadows, No ! 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 501 

" For now, behold, the arm that gave 

The victory in our fathers' day, 
Strong, as of old, to guard and save, — 

That mighty arm, which none can stay, — 
On clouds above and fields below, 
Writes, in men's sight, the answer, No! 

" O country, marvel of the earth! 

O realm, to sudden greatness grown ! 
The age that gloried in thy birth, 

Shall it behold thee overthrown? 
Shall traitors lay that greatness low? 
No, land of hope and beauty, No ! " 

The first cry for the Union was an inspiration. It sprang 
unconsciously from every lip. They said " a picnic excur- 
sion to the Potomac will settle the business. Seventy-five 
thousand men, in holiday costume, lounging in Baltimore 
and Washington hotels, and easily moving down upon Kich- 
mond, will re-cement the Union in its old and immaculate 
perfection." They knew not with how great a price this 
treasure was to be bought. One army after another must 
perish. The pleasure excursion must become funereal. 
" Death must come up into all our windows, and enter into 
our palaces, to cut off the young men from the streets." 
After three years and over, of such a price paid for the 
Union, the people reaffirmed their solemn vow, not as at 
first in thoughtless exultation and enthusiasm, but in a tear- 
ful, a humble, yet most resolute purpose to carry out that 
divine inspiration, at whatever expense of money or of life. 

So intense was this feeling, that no one presumed to ask 
our suffrages who would not publicly consecrate himself to 
the Union. But some held out the olive branch to the re- 
bellion ; complained of the war and the sacrifices of purse, 
of life, of liberty that were essential to secure its perpetua- 
tion ; and the people decided, with an agreement that has 
since been made unanimous by the willing cooperation of 
all, " the Union shall be preserved ; at whatever cost, at 



502 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

whatever hazard, at whatever suffering", we will be still one 
people." From the Calais of our continent to its Golden 
Gate, a space larger than that which Europe spans between 
her Calais and her Golden Horn, with a depth, a solemnity. 
an enthusiasm that was unutterable, the heart, the voice, 
the vote said, " We are, Ave will be one." That debate has 
closed ; 1864, it will be said by the future historian, settled 
the question of America's nationality. No longer will State- 
rights resolutions vex and frighten the people. No longer 
will we foolishly say, "Our system is an experiment." It 
has ceased to occupy that place in human affairs. Once the 
press was an experiment ; so was the railroad, so the steam- 
ship, so ocean steam-navigation, so the telegraph, so Protes- 
tantism, so Christianity. But they have ceased to hold such' 
positions. The American Union has likewise ; it stands 
forth before the world the most tried, the most triumphant 
form of government that exists among men. 

(2.) The election settled the greater and more doubtful 
question of liberty. The President had proclaimed eman- 
cipation ; but would the nation proclaim it ? It was his act 
before, his alone. Congress had not confirmed it. The 
Supreme Court had not constitutionalized it. The people, 
" the masters," as the President happily says, " of Congress 
and the courts," sat in judgment upon it. They heard the 
appeals of the contending attorneys. They carefully de- 
liberated. They enthusiastically affirmed it. Henceforth it 
stands as enduring and sublime as the Declaration and the 
Constitution. 

Already has it brought forth perfect fruit. Congress, 
the servant of the people, has uttered its decree, and the 
nation is redeemed forever from the yoke of bondage. Four 
years ago we only dared to stay the progress of this deluge 
of death. We promised to preserve it inviolate where it 
was. We would have passed an amendment to the Consti- 
tution, pledging ourselves to secure it national protection in 



SECOND ELECTION OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 503 

the States where it existed, if that would have appeased our 
enraged masters. Charles Francis Adams offered such an 
amendment, and only the hopelessness of its acceptance by 
the slaveholders prevented its passage ; and now another 
amendment has passed, not to preserve it intact, but to 
sweep it from the land. Then the President, under his 
inaugural oath, promised it the support of his official arm ; 
now the same President, before the campaign opens, and 
when policy requires those declarations that are the least 
offensive and the most popular, announces his purpose to 
labor for its universal extirpation. 

No equal reform was ever so speedily effected. Never 
before has a great nation so suddenly swept away an 
iniquity which was so inwoven into its whole fabric of 
social as well as civil life as to have received the familiar 
title of " the domestic institution." Till within four years it 
governed the land. It had elected our presidents, appointed 
our judges, sent abroad our ambassadors, chosen our Con- 
gresses, enacted our laws, controlled our commerce, dictated 
our fashions, tyrannized over society ; had been the only 
constant, the supreme power in the land. 

Thus stood the system then. The people after years of 
exhortation gained courage to look the monster in the face ; 
they dared to say to it in its onward march, Halt ! It raged 
on them with supercilious scorn. "If war comes," says its 
arch-leader, "it shall be on Northern soil. They shall smell 
Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Little did its 
myrmidons fancy its future. They were assured of unques- 
tioned dominion. 

How are the mighty fallen ! Three fifths of their territory 
is wrested from them. One half of their slaves are national 
freemen. One half of their States have broken from their 
allegiance, and have adopted constitutions forbidding slavery. 
And now we are on the verge of universal emancipation. 
Ere this year shall close, liberty will be proclaimed by the 



504 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

agreement of the ratifying States throughout all the land 
to all the inhabitants thereof. Hallelujah ! the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth ! His right arm hath gotten Him the 
victory ! 

Wise men, even when believing in Abolitionism, counted 
those foolish who said when the former election occurred, 
that under peaceable movements slavery would cease before 
1816, but if war came it would not last five years. War 
came, and where is it ? You may diligently consider its 
place, but it is not. A s the antediluvian world in forty days 
was washed out of the earth, with all its wealth and pride, 
with its solid temples and palaces, so that the keenest 
antiquarian can find no trace of its existence, so has this 
system, wicked as any the antediluvian sinners imagined, 
much less did, been buried under the deluge of God's in- 
dignation through the myriad arms and votes of His obedient 
people. 

(3.) This election was the victory of Democracy. Union 
might have been maintained and true democracy destroyed. 
So was it well nigh in the " save-the-Union " victories of 
1852 and 1856. So is it utterly in the strong league of the 
slaveholders to-day. But our victory was the triumph of 
the equal rights of all men, without distinction of color or 
origin, " I vote the white man's ticket," said one on 
depositing his ballot for the unsuccessful candidate. " I 
vote all men's ticket," might have been the just response to 
his anti-democratic democracy. This question, deeper far 
than that of Union, deeper even than that of liberty, was 
also in the thickest of the great conflict. It was the un- 
spoken word, louder than any that was uttered. It was the 
undertow, stronger than any which agitated the surface, that 
moved the Ship of State on its God-appointed course. 

This victory has already achieved great results. Its 
greatest we have mentioned. It alone produced the amend- 
ment and purged the land of its ancestral curse. Another 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 505 

result, hardly inferior, deserves a record. It caused the 
elevation of Mr. Chase to the Chief- Justiceship. Had 
his principles not triumphed in that campaign, he would 
not sit, to-day, on the throne of national justice, their 
most permanent, and, with one exception, most exalted em- 
bodiment. 

For a generation the people had been made to err in 
judgment. One who occupied that bench had begun his 
career as an abolitionist, but abandoned it under the tempta- 
tions of ambition. That seat became the fountain of in- 
justice. The whole bench became corrupt. Every judge 
became a partaker of the sins of his chief. If one died who 
kept his ermine spotless amid the great defilement, his place 
was supplied with one fouler than the rest, until at the last 
the whole was a unit of sin and shame. The circuit judges, 
and even the commissioners, were infected with the same 
poison, so that no human being pleading for his liberty 
found favor in the eyes of these unjust judges. The fact 
that they sought it was made the ground of its refusal. 
The more they wearied them the less they obtained justice. 
In Boston as well as in Charleston did this iniquity sit in the 
throne of judgment. 

At last their Chief spoke, and, like his master in Eden, 
gave the lie to all the principles in which we were created. 
America, the child of equal rights, gives no rights to one 
sixth of her population. Free or slave, they are all without 
the pale of law. They cannot plead at her bar for property, 
liberty, or life. They cannot testify for themselves or 
others. They cannot defend themselves, their wives, or 
their children. They have no rights which this nation is 
bound to respect. 

God heard that hiss of hell, and He too entered this Eden 
and walked among a fallen people, who sought to hide them- 
selves from Him by impudently denying His authority and 
His law. He said, " If 3Iy children have no rights, you 



506 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

shall have no peace. If they cannot hold their property, I 
will take yours away. If they are deprived of their liberty, 
your sons shall pine in a more loathsome prison-house, 
beside which the hut and the fare of My negro child are 
princely. If their lives are not protected, yours shall be 
wasted." How fearfully has He avenged His own elect who 
cried day and night unto Him ! We have heard and heeded, 
and through this election brought forth a great work, meet 
for our great repentance. For that God-vacated office the 
national voice nominated their candidate. It was God's ap- 
pointment, not theirs. He had identified himself with the 
oppressed from the beginning. He had been a consistent, 
humble, faithful lover of God and his fellow-man. He had 
plead their rights unheard at the very bar where now he 
sits supreme. Greatest of all our victories is this. More 
than the triumphs of Grant, and Sherman, and Farragut ; 
more than the reelection of Mr. Lincoln and the assertion of 
our unity and abolitionism, is the elevation of Salmon P. 
Chase to the Chief-Justiceship of America. Those were 
wrested from our foes, this from ourselves. Those were 
the expressions of pride, this of principle. Those sought to 
save the national life, this the national soul. Those insured 
our existence, this our glory. 

His was more than the appointment of Jay or Marshall. 
Upright as they were, they were not selected especially in 
view of the relation of their uprightness to existing wrong. 
Justice Chase was. He will uproot with his judicial ax not 
slavery alone, but its worse roots, caste and prejudice, and 
all the undemocratic and unjust treatment of our fellow- 
citizens and fellow-men, and complete the work that is so 
gloriously begun.* 

* In the light of this position of Mr. Chase, his private words, written 
to Theodore Parker, are worthy of our attention. They are found in 
the Appendix to Mr. Parker's Life, p. 520. Thus he writes : "I don't 
pretend to be a very wise or expert statesman, or anything of that sort ; 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 507 

3. The consequences of this decision are twofold : those 
that concern foreign states, those that will affect our own. 

(1.) This election will be an important step in the libera- 
tion of Europe. As the " bubble democracy " has not 
"burst/' that of aristocracy must. The two systems are 
wrestling for the mastery of the world. Three millions of 
bayonets support a half dozen thrones on the necks of a 
hundred millions of men. Those hundred millions have 
heard this great decision ; their half a score of masters have 
heard it also. Victoria sees in it the hand of America, her 
nation's first born, writing the doom of her family on the 
walls of her palace. Napoleon beholds in it his dream 
dissolving, of Mexican domination and California acquisi- 
tion. The breakwater he had hoped to have set across our 
Southern line to the deluge of democracy is swept away, 
and the refluent waves will not only drown his American 
pretensions but his central throne. 

Already "The Times'' confesses its influence on the rising 
demands of the disfranchised masses of Britain. Already 
the Secretary of her Treasury declares that manhood is the 
only right basis for suffrage. Already the peasants and 
patriots of the continent are uniting together for the com- 
mon weal. 

The suddenness and completeness of our emancipation is 
but a type of that which will yet renew the face of the earth. 
In a day has this nation been born. In one shall those of 
England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Russia ; not 
in their present disintegrated and hostile condition, but like 
ours, a unity of life, of liberty, of name ; one nation, free, 
fraternal, Christian. 

(2.) But more important duties invite our service. We 

but a roughly-trained practical man, who wishes to do something for 
truth, justice, and human progress, and who would prefer that what little 
he does or says should be so spoken of, that nothing in his example of 
word or deed shall even seem to contribute to the upholding of wrong." 



508 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

too have a future as well as a present and a past ; and it 
would ill become us in our rejoicings over what we have 
attained to be unmindful of what yet remains to be ac- 
complished. 

This battle has settled two great questions that have been in 
fierce debate and in perilous position throughout our history. 
It has shown that the nation is rooted and grounded in the 
doctrine of Union and the doctrine of liberty. These pillars 
of its common weal it will stand by so long as its nationality 
endures. There is yet one step it must take, — Fraternity. 
The French democrats wisely put this as the climax of their 
creed. It is there and everywhere the highest grace, and 
the last attained. We have decided for democracy. We 
must carry out the principles of democracy. That principle 
is no distinction of man from man by any accidents of color 
or clime. " All ye are brethren 77 is its sole creed. We 
have yet failed to embrace this truth. The Cleveland Plat- 
form declared the right of all men to suffrage. Congress in 
its territorial constitutions, Maryland and Missouri in their 
new free constitutions, limit that right to white men. They 
are not yet wholly free. Only by consistently obeying this 
call of God can we preserve that whereto we have attained. 
Cromwell and Napoleon both failed in the great revolutions 
they achieved ; and why ? Because they were false to the 
fundamental principle of those revolutions. The Pilgrims of 
Plymouth gave Cromwell the model of a free commonwealth. 
Equality and fraternity were the foci of its orbit. He 
created himself lord, and the Lord of lords cast him down 
headlong, and his work fell with him into a grave, where it 
has lain for more than two centuries. Napoleon was the 
child of democracy. He denied the mother that bore him, 
and was cast out and trodden under foot of his enemies. 
This grace he could not retain. The peasant Frenchman the 
Emperor's equal? Never. Do not we feel like him ? Would 
we not welcome to our tables to-day a rebellious slaveholder 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 509 

sooner than his loyal slave, even if the latter was as well- 
mannered as the former ? Would we place one of this class 
in our stores or shops, however capable ? Would we accept 
the brightest scholar in the land, if of this race, as a pro- 
fessor in our schools, or the most eloquent preacher, whose 
lips God has anointed with grace, as our pastor and guide ? 

This prejudice exists only in this fraction of our continent. 
It must be overcome here. The conductor on the cars from 
Cairo to Alexandria was as black as ebony, while nearly all 
the passengers were either Europeans or Arabs ; and the 
African was the easy master of the turbulent Asiatics and 
the haughty Caucasians. 

To the removal of this prejudice every lover of Christ and 
his country should devote himself. If we pause now, we 
fall back into a deeper % pit than that out of which God has 
most mercifully and most miraculously delivered us. 

That such is our peril, the history of the great party 
whose career is just closing clearly shows. No party ever 
had a more glorious beginning. It sprang into life as the 
friend of man. 

It won the power, and war arose. In the hight of the 
war the Federalists assailed it and were annihilated. An 
era of good feeling sprang up. The Democrats rejected 
the doctrine of the equal rights of all men, the headstone 
of their corner, and it has become the headstone of their 
grave. Jefferson favored slavery, of which he had declared 
God had no attribute that did not make war upon it. He 
urged its extension beyond the Mississippi. The democrac} 7- 
passed the Missouri Compromise, and in that day, dying it 
died. Never since has it breathed its natal air. Never 
since has it been the defender of the rights of man. 

4. But if the year has been thus wonderful in its deeds, 
the duties it imposes are not less vital. What is the service 
to which the Master calls us ? This, and this only : — 

To abolish from the national action and the national heart 
all distinctions arising from color or origin. 



510 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

( 1 . ) In the discharge of this duty we must seek to abolish 
the unrighteous distinctions which are made in the composi- 
tion and control of our armies. Had it been announced to our 
foreign-born population, "You can only serve in regiments of 
your own nationality ; you are forbidden to march in the 
same company with American troops/' how would they have 
scorned the summons of such a government ! How justly 
would they have said, " Let Americans save America, if 
they persist in oppressing us with such invidious distinc- 
tions ! " Equally just would it have been for colored Ameri- 
cans to have said, " Y^ou compel us to keep in regiments by 
ourselves ; we will march in no regiments at all. You brand 
us with prejudicial infamy ; we will not voluntarily accept 
the insult. If your government shall draft us and compel us 
to fight, we are powerless to resist: but not of ourselves 
will we rally to the flag; that is not fraternal." 

This distinction must be abolished. A citizen, if he volun- 
teers, should join what regiment he chooses ; if he is drafted, 
those that most need his musket. We shall then cease to 
read of the valor of white or colored troops as separate 
bodies, but of men and patriots, whose complexion may be 
various, but whose blood and bravery are one. 

We should abolish also the refusal to grant them commis- 
sions and commands.. This glaring injustice will be patent 
to every eye, if we consider what would be the feelings and 
conduct of other privates should such a law degrade them. 
Were it announced to the army that only West Point 
graduates could hold commissions ; that their valor, their 
skill, their experience can only elevate them to a sergeant's 
bands, how long would they serve such a land ? Yet there 
are a hundred thousand of our soldiers who fight under this 
insulting opprobrium. However valorous, however endowed 
with military genius, however prodigal of life, they are not 
only compelled to serve in the ranks, but to see less com- 
petent white men set over them, and that solely on the 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 511 

ground of their complexion. This great injustice, this 
democratic lie, must be abandoned. It is part and parcel 
of the system of aristocracy that we have formally decreed 
shall vanish away. The work has been initiated by the 
conferring of a lieutenant's commission on one of these 
soldiers. It should be hastened forward. Congress should 
abolish the unjust distinction, and the man, whatever his 
complexion or origin, who wins his shoulder straps, should 
wear them studded, if he deserves it, with the three stars of 
a lieutenant-general. 

(2.) We must grant them civil equality and fraternity. 

The question of negro suffrage is assuming an importance, 
not only to the true Democrat and Christian, but to the most 
feeble or most false professor of democracy and Christianity. 
It will be found that here as in the araij" we must call on 
those we yet despise to come and save us. Professor 
Lieber shows that by abolishing slavery we have increased 
the basis of representation in the Southern States by the two 
fifths of the slaves who were before constitutionally ex- 
cluded. If these are forbidden to vote, it increases the 
power of the white man in those States against his fellow of 
the North, by that large addition to a census-counted but 
non-voting population. If the rebels should be allowed to 
return with any powers and privileges, such as would have 
been accorded them in the late peace conferences, they 
would avail themselves of this iniquity to reestablish them- 
selves in more than their former power. Our only and sure 
cure for this peril, is for Congress to decree the right of suf- 
frage for national officers to be without respect of color. 

Again, the loyal white men of the South must call on their 
equally loyal brothers, often of more white than colored 
descent, to come and save them from the voting of their 
secession neighbors. These once active rebels, when these 
States resume their forms of civil life, will outnumber their 
loyal neighbors, and snatch again the scepter after having 



512 THE WONDERFUL YEAE. 

thrown down the sword with which they had sought the 
murder of the very government they will then represent. 
The loyal whites will be cast back into the pit out of which 
the national arm has dragged them, unless they will lift 
their like loyal colored fellow-citizens to equal honor. 

But not as a measure of necessity should this be urged. 
It is one of duty. In many States of the Union this cruel 
disability exists. With proud, rebellious hearts we say, 
" The foreigner may vote, the native shall not. The brutal- 
ized victim of Papacy, whom priests and pope make hostile 
to our ideas and institutions, may oppose the government 
that protects him with ballot, almost with bullet, and yet 
lose no right of suffrage ; while the most Protestant of our 
Protestants, the most godly of the godly, the most faithful 
of the faithful, shall not utter his voice at the ballot-box 
against these foreign foes." We should instantly annihilate 
every such barrier, and make suffrage and manhood identi- 
cal. What Gladstone demands for England, Congress ought 
to bestow upon America. 

" But/' cries one of timid soul, "if this right is conferred 
so freely in States where the blacks have a majority, they will 
become its governors and representatives, and a black man 
may sit as a senator in our national Capitol ! " And why 
not ? Ought not the larger fraction of the population of 
South Carolina, who are among the most loyal in the land, 
to have the administration of the affairs of that Common- 
wealth ? And if the most conservative citizens have for 
3 r ears contemplated with approval, and aided with their 
liberality, the rising glory of Liberia, can they object to a 
more truly named Liberia growing into majestic life on the 
ruins of Charleston, so long* the seat of the beast ? Will not 
Captain Eobert Small be as good a governor of South 
Carolina as Michael Hahn, far less loyal, is of Louisiana ? 
Is not his first office prophetic of his future, and is not the 
master of "The Planter " yet to be the master of the planters ? 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 513 

But not alone in the States where they are numerically 
superior will they justly claim the position their merits 
shall secure for them. In every State the same privileges 
must be accorded. Xo more and no less in Carolina than 
New York should they rise higher than they merit. Here as 
there, whoever deserves the highest seats, should sit there. 
Frederick Douglass, one of the first orators and clearest 
headed statesmen of America, should be the representative 
in Congress from his district. He lias no equal in the 
national estimation within its boundaries. He would soon 
show that he was worthy to follow his great Auburn neigh- 
bor into the Senate chamber and the Cabinet. He might 
win what the other has lost, because to his ability is joined 
more popularity if not more principle — the highest honor the 
nation can bestow. " Palmam ferat qui meruit " is the only 
motto for a democratic people. If he deserves the palm he 
should carry it, by the votes and with the applause of all 
the nation. 

(3.) This work should be carried forward in the Church. 
Sad is the fact, but most true, that these who call them- 
selves the disciples and representatives of Jesns Christ are 
in their body, the most tenacious of this iniquity. What- 
ever the name of the Church, her spirit and act is the same. 
No professed Church of Jesus Christ here has reached the 
hights of fraternity which every other profession has al- 
lowed. The medical and the legal bodies have admitted 
them as equals ; not so the clerical. They visit around the 
same couch, they act as attorneys for the same client as 
their whiter fellows ; they cannot belong to the same con- 
ference with us, travel the same circuit, or be settled over 
the same congregation. And yet the Church professes to 
represent, and should represent, the highest ideas that man 
can receive or entertain. It is the depository, the vehicle 
of God. His best truths he commits to her as a distributing 
reservoir to all the world. Her ministers He deigns to call 
33 



514 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

His servants and embassadors ; her members, His sons and 
daughters ; and yet when His Son, the brightness of His 
glory, and the express image of His person, calls himself 
especially the Son of man — not of men, much less of a 
class of men, and that white men, but the Son of max ; 
when His Spirit orders His servant to declare to the Churches 
that in Christ Jesus the middle wall of partition is broken 
down ; that in Him there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian 
nor Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female ; when He 
forbids the setting off one portion of the Church by itself 
for any outward distinctions ; against the words of Christ, 
the teachings of the apostles, the lessons of history, the 
testimony of every conscience in the sight of God, the 
Church in America gives herself earnestly to the support of 
this heaven-hated sin. She compels these her brethren and 
sisters to form Churches of their own. She separates God's 
ministers, if the least tinged with this complexion into con- 
ferences by themselves. If any of these Christians come 
into her Brahmin assemblies, she hastens to commit the very 
sin that James rebukes, and has " the faith of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons," 
saying unto his brother, often of the very complexion of 
James and the Lord Jesus Christ, " Stand thou there, or sit 
here under my footstool." How those holy words- rebuke 
our haughty sin ! "If ye fulfill the royal law according to 
the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye 
do well. But if ye have respect of persons, }^e commit 
sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors." Then 
comes that dreadful imprecation, so awfully fulfilled upon 
the apostate Churches of the South, so fearfully experienced 
in our own griefs and calamities : " For he shall have judg- 
ment without mercy that hath showed no mercy." 

0, that the Church would arise and wash herself of this 
abomination ! She should instantly invite her despised 
brethren to sit in her exalted seats. She should abolish 



SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 515 

the iniquity known only to Protestant America, the colored 
Church. She should invite all those whom God has called 
to serve at her altars, which are not hers, but His. She 
should throw her mighty influence against this cruel and 
false prejudice, and drive it from the land. She should 
proclaim the great doctrine of the Bible, the central doc- 
trine of the Cross, the unity, the fraternity of man, and 
should declare that what God hath put together man shall 
not put asunder. Then, and then only, will God's smile 
and benediction rest upon her. Then shall she go forth, 
not as now, to feeble victories and frequent defeats, but 
to constant, glorious, and increasing triumphs. Scrip- 
tural holiness will spread rapidly over all the land, and the 
coming of Christ speedily redden the divine horizon. 

To this high and heavenly work the great election calls 
us. This grand future opens its celestial vistas to our 
waiting eyes. Union, emancipation, democracy, the triad 
of triumphant principles, will insure the unification, the 
liberation, the fraternization of America. Her sons, of 
whatever hue, shall wear her honors of whatever hight. 
Sella Martin will be the popular pastor of a popular Church, 
having no taint in its composition of the present bitterness 
of Christians against their better brethren, but composed 
indiscriminately of those who, though of many complexions, 
are of one Lord, one faith, one baptism. John S. Rock will 
sit as judge where now not one of his race can sit as a 
juror even when those of their own color are on trial for 
their life ; and the perfection of justice will be consummated, 
and God the Judge of all, be satisfied then, and then only, 
when one of this blood whom our late Chief-Justice declared 
had no rights, shall occupy his seat as the administrator of 
equal rights to all the land. Such a one is the Queen's 
highest judicial representative in Jamaica to-day. Such will 
be America's in Washington to-morrow. 

Such are some of the results and obligations which spring 



516 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 

from that national decree. The work is not yet accom- 
plished. Our brothers yet pine in prison-houses, and suffer 
unto death on the bloody field. The foe is yet stiff-necked 
and rebellious. It may be long ere the high lands of per- 
petual peace are reached. We may see days as dark as any 
which have covered us. Yet the end is sure. The grand 
uprising assures its coming. Does it also that higher, that 
diviner end to which the whole creation moves ? Will the 
nation, will the Church, will every Christian, every minister, 
every man gird himself for this greater task ? If so, that 
higher glory will speedily dawn. The sun will rise that 
knows no setting. The kingdom of Christ will be estab- 
lished. The whole earth, one family, will dwell in Him, 
knit together in love, in labor, in faith, in joy ; while over 
it all will bend the cloud of witnesses, with celestial faces, 
the martyred and sainted dead of every age and clime, not 
the least in honor and happiness those of our own age and 
clime, reliving happiest lives in their more saintly children, 
the inheritors of their sacrifices, their grace, their renown. 

" Eor all they thought, and loved, and did, 
And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 
Of what in these is flower and fruit." 



THE VIAL POUKED OUT ON THE SEAT 
OF THE BEAST.* 




And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the 
beast ; and his kingdom was full of darkness ; and they 
gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the god 
of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and re- 
PENTED NOT of their deeds." — Revelation xvi. 10, 11. 

E have often been summoned to the sanctuary, in 
the progress of the great controversy so near its 
end, at times to exult, but chiefly to mourn. We 
have been constrained to set forth the national sin 
and the national danger ; to point to the cloud charged 
with God's thunderbolts, that hung black and fiery over a 
vain and careless land, and to urge upon the Church and the 
nation the tears, the words, the deeds of repentance. We 
have seen that cloud gather blackness as the nation and the 
Church went plunging from sin to sin, until at last it broke 
forth in such a storm as has not fallen upon any land since 
the fiery shower fell upon Sodom. Under that cloud, through 
that sea, we have waded forward, slowly and tremblingly, 

* A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the Fall of Charles- 
ton, March 5, 18G5. 

(517) 



518 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 

stumbling often in the mire of our own corruptions, refus- 
ing often to listen to the command of God, which ordered 
us onward, trusting in arms of flesh, in compromises, in 
pride, in self, in sin. But as these fancied helps broke under 
the weight with which our weakness compelled us to burden 
them, we found ourselves sinking, with a faintness almost 
unto death, upon the only Arm that could save. The un wel- 
comed duty sounded dreary as a funeral knell in our fright- 
ened ears, and only to preserve ourselves from destruction 
did we heed its hated summons. A merciful God granted 
us salvation even under such undeserving circumstances. 
Though with great and sore chastisements, with misery and 
death multiplied manifold, He saved us from utter exter- 
mination. He is bringing us out into a wealthy place. 

We are, we hope, on the verge of complete victory. The 
last steps to this divine consummation are being taken. 
One more, and the goal is reached. That step must, ere 
long, follow, and the arch-rebel flees for life through the 
regions where for years he has ruled in power and great 
glory, and where he fancied his glory was to be perpetual. 
In the progress of these achievements we have reached one 
event that ought not to pass unnoticed. The fall of Charles- 
ton will be more memorable to the future student of this 
war than that of any other city. Its capture will surpass 
in interest that of all its rivals in iniquity, from New Orleans 
to Richmond. In the ruin that has overwhelmed it, God 
has written out in the eyes of all the world His just dis- 
pleasure, His inevitable vengeance against sinners. In 
dwelling upon this theme we are raised to the hights of the 
divinest truth, where the dread vision of a sovereign God, 
exercising His power in justly punishing willful, persistent, 
and awful transgressors, stands forth before our awe-struck 
eyes. The angels of His vengeance are flying in the midst 
of heaven. The vials of His wrath are poured upon the air. 
We see the fearful devastations ; we see the Lord, strong 



FALL OF CHARLESTON. 519 

and mighty, sad, and solemn, and serene, quietly casting- 
His enemies into destruction. 

Let us draw near this mount that burnetii with fire, that 
is enshrouded with blackness, that trembles, and rocks be- 
neath the footsteps of a descending God. Standing afar off 
we behold the fearful spectacle. As the shells drop bursting 
upon the doomed town, it seems as if they were lightnings 
darting from the very heavens. That cannon's roar is but 
the muttering of the voice of God in angry thunder. As 
Abraham, from the distant hills of Hebron, beheld the smoke 
of Sodom go up as the smoke of a furnace, so may we be- 
hold the smoking ruins of the haughtiest and wickedest town 
that has existed in this generation on the face of the whole 
earth. Nowhere has there been such sin, nowhere such just 
and terrible punishment. 

In considering this subject, let us study more closely the 
sin and punishment of this city, and draw from this divine 
act such lessons of national and individual duty as it is in- 
tended to teach. 

I. Its sin. The Seat of the Beast. No place in modern 
history has achieved so infamous distinction as the city of 
Charleston. Rome is supposed by many to be in the eye 
of the revelator when he wrote this vision. That city has 
truly been drunk with the blood of the saints. It has been 
full of pride, and malice, and murder. Its inquisition stands 
beside its cathedral. Tortures fill its walls with stifled 
cries. Dungeons and death bury the victims of liberty and 
truth alive in their ponderous and marble jaws. It has sent 
its emissaries and influence throughout the world, and re- 
peated its pride and cruelty in every clime and age. Yet 
Rome has never equalled Charleston in crime. Paris is a 
worldly, sensual, wicked town. It fosters vanity and vice. 
It is the seat of a ruler who is subtle, comprehensive, active, 
bold. He marches forth his armies into Italy and Mexico 
to subdue liberty in the name of Liberty. It is the seat of 



520 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 

the most powerful foe of European rights that Europe con- 
tains. Yet Paris is Paradise compared with Charleston. 

London is a mighty mass of swollen wealth and pride, 
poverty and corruption. She keeps millions of her natives 
poor, ignorant and disfranchised, downtrodden and despised, 
that bloated thousands may strut the lordlier. The crime 
of London, as the centre of the ruling" forces of England, 
is written with the point of a diamond. It will, unless it 
repents, assuredly feel the awful judgments of God. Yet 
London is heaven by the side of Charleston. 

The metropolitan city of America is far from being perfect 
before God. It is given into the hands of wicked men — 
plundered by its officials, abandoned to pleasure, to avarice, 
to crime. And yet New York is spotless before the little 
city by the sluggish streams and amid the sultry marshes 
of Carolina. She is preeminently the Seat of the Beast. 

What is the pride of London or of Rome to hers ? They 
boast, the one of its commercial, the other of its spiritual 
supremacy. They despise others. Their population is 
largely paupers or beggars. Their political prisons yet 
immure or threaten the lovers of liberty with their hated 
walls. But they do not forbid the lowly citizens from ac- 
quiring the rudiments of knowledge. They do not compel 
them to work without any wages. Their leading merchants 
do not take these rewardless toilers to their centers of trade, 
causing them to mount the auction-block, and, sitting haugh- 
tily around, despite the strong crying and tears of their vic- 
tims, knock them down to the highest bidder. 

The Jews' quarter at Rome is nightly shut with iron gates ; 
but its occupants are not rung to their dens by the bells of 
St. Peter's, nor is one of them who is found without seized 
and cast into prison, horribly scourged, and more horribly 
sold into bondage. They are not subject to unutterable 
crime, boastingly wreaked upon them by their disdainful 
lords and owners. They are not shipped in chains, or driven 



FALL OF CHARLESTON. 521 

across the land to distant hovels, torn from loving hearts, 
and cast into a fiery furnace, whose flames burn with intol- 
erable fierceness, though the Son of God walks with them 
in its midst. These horrors of horrors were reserved for 
Protestant America, for more Protestant Charleston. One 
third of her population have been subjected to these direful 
cruelties. They walked by stately school-houses which they 
could never enter. They were driven forth to daily tasks 
for which they received no wages. The} T were compelled to 
hasten to their huts and rags at the stroke of the evening- 
bell on pain of punishment and the lash. They were the 
victims of immeasurable crimes, which God and hell can 
only punish. They were marched through the central street 
in the heart of the city, into a building with " Mart " 
rightly stamped upon its front. It needed no prefix, as it 
was the chief, in fact, the only trade of the city, all others 
centering in this traffic in slaves and the souls of men. 
Here they were driven up and down a platform, sixty feet 
in length, to show off their points to their critical buyers. 
Here, in smaller rooms, they were blushingly exposed to 
the unblushing eyes of their own fathers and brothers. 
Hence they tottered, trembling with anguish and despair, 
to their new fields of toil, and terror, and most welcome 
death. 

What city has such a record ? Where has the Seat of 
the Beast been so clearly established ? We look abroad for 
this fulfillment of the Book of Revelation. We find it at 
our own door. The. Bible is not a prophecy of Babylon or 
Rome alone, but of America, of the United States ; not of 
yesterday, but of to-day. Here and .now is the vial poured 
forth on the Seat of the Beast. 

But though in distinction from European and even heathen 
capitals, this city is by merit raised to her bad eminence, it 
may be asked, How is she the. superior of her sisters in sin? 
Is not Savannah, or Mobile, or New Orleans, all flourishing 



522 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 

depots of cotton and humanity, her equal ? Is not Rich- 
mond, above all other places, the breeder and the seller 
of human flesh and soul, from whose wharves and depots 
hundreds went weekly to their living graves, — is she not 
deeper than Charleston in the gulf of transgression, and will 
she not be in that of perdition ? Nay, these associates were 
subordinates, not equals. 

She was the chief in sin, because she threw around the 
iniquity the threefold robe of civil, and social, and religious 
character. She made slavery her idea. To it her ablest 
minds devoted their ablest powers. By the pen, in the 
forum, on the bench, from the pulpit, they justified, they 
glorified, they deified Slavery. From the beginning they 
exhibited this tendency. They erased from the Declaration 
the words Virginia inserted that reflected upon the slave 
trade. They inserted in the Constitution the words that 
Virginia sought to erase, which gave Slavery the protection 
of the national flag-, and raised it from a local and limited, 
and therefore dying crime, to a national and dominant insti- 
tution. They avowed their purpose, despite these conces- 
sions, to destroy the Union that protected their demon, 
because it did not promise to propagate it. They sought 
to break its bands more than fifty years ago ; and more than 
thirty, lifted the standard of revolt, professedly in the inter- 
est of the tariff, actually then, as now, in that of slavery. 
Failing in this, the State set about the nationalizing of the 
accursed thing-. She made her chosen son Secretary of State, 
and through him declared, with the approval of the govern- 
ment, that Slavery was the corner-stone of the American 
Republic. In its interests her representatives wrought un- 
tiringly, and wove the web they meant for her coronation, 
but which has become her shroud. 

She first saw the man-child of Abolitionism, and sought 
its destruction in its cradle. She drove the gray-haired 
representative of human rights violently from her doors. 



THE FALL OF CHARLESTON. 523 

She gagged those who raised a voice in its defence in the 
halls of the Union. She struck down with the bludgeon 
its senatorial defenders. She challenged its representatives 
to mortal combat. Her clergy rent every Church in twain, 
that would not bow the knee to her Baal. She first leaped 
up in revolt when the people had decreed that her infamous 
reign should cease. She avowed her purpose to reopen the 
slave trade, and to make the ocean a Styx, swarming with 
worse than Charon's boats — even those that conveyed none 
to Elysium, all to Tartarus. 

Well may she be called the Seat of the Beast. Well may 
she stand forth in history beside, nay, before, Egypt, Bab- 
ylon, Kome, whoever enslaved the people of God and ex- 
ulted in their hideous deeds. They sinned against little 
light ; she against much. They were the children of dark- 
ness ; she of the light. They fell from earth ; she from 
heaven. They entered the grave; she hell. 

But, if great is her sin, great also is her punishment. 
The Vial is poured out on the Seat of the Beast. Such 
destruction has visited no other center of the rebellion. 
Her servile vassal, the capital of the State she controlled, 
has fallen justly into a like burning grave. But she alone 
of the rebellious cities has seen, or is likely to see, destruc- 
tion. New Orleans lost nothing but her chains. Savannah, 
Nashville, Natchez are unharmed. Eichmond may share her 
fate, but will probably remain entire, a monument of the 
persistence of arms, not of ideas. Virginia, the seat of the 
traffic in slaves, and Charleston, the seat of the influence 
of slavery, have felt the heaviest the hand of God. Her 
wharves are empty. Her palaces deserted, dismantled, and 
torn from top to bottom with the plunging shell. Her own 
sons, in the rage of their despair, turned their shotted guns 
upon her, cast the torch amid her inflammable cotton and 
more inflammable gunpowder, and by one stroke destroyed 
both of the props on which she trusted for success in arms. 



524 THE VIAL POUEED OUT. 

Her citizens cared nothing for the miserable poor that still 
sought shelter there ; nothing for her ancestral name, noth- 
ing for her still existing wealth. Like the progeny of Sin 
and Death, whose kindred they are, they " gnaw her bowels 
for repast. " They even rejoice in her ruin. How their 
hearts must have sunk within them as they fled trembling- 
and astonished, by night and by day, leaving the seat of 
their pomp and pride to the foot of the conqueror. Surely 
the bitterness of death cannot surpass, hardly can equal, 
the agony of shame, remorse, and rage, every passion 
but penitence that blazed in their yet haughty and hating 
souls. " Their kingdom was full of darkness. They gnawed 
their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven, 
because of their pains and their sores, and most truly 
' repented not of their deeds.' " 

How faithfully doth the seer depict her doom : "Her sins 
have reached unto heaven and God hath remembered her 
iniquities. In the cup which she hath filled, He hath filled 
to her double." The potion she has so long poured down 
her innocent children she is compelled to drink, even to the 
dregs thereof. ." How much she hath glorified herself and 
lived deliriously, so much are torment and sorrow given her. 
For she said in her heart, I sit a queen ; I am no widow, and 
shall see no sorrow. Therefore have her plagues come in 
one day. Death, and mourning, and famine, and she is utter- 
ly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judgeth 
her. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles 
and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her." 

No such destruction has overwhelmed a sinful power 
since the French nobility, gorged with the blood of their 
people, went down in the night of terror. Nay, they fell less, 
for they had sinned less. They have sunk like the angel's 
millstone into the sea, and they shall be found no more at 
all. Their mighty names have become titles of weakness 
and dishonor. Their Barnwells, and Rhetts, and Hamp- 



THE FALL OF CHARLESTON. 525 

tons, and Haynes, and Prestons, pipe and whistle in the 
ghostly sound. Poor and fugitive, they apprehend the feel- 
ings of those of their slaves who have fled in like fear and 
trembling from their enraged pursuit. " With what measure 
ye mete it shall be measured to you again," must sound 
sadly in their painful ears. It is no bloodhound's cry they 
hear, but the tramp of armed men, the roar of hostile cannon, 
the crackling of burning- roof-trees, the shouts of liberated 
slaves. These make doleful music to their exiled steps. 
They go a way they shall not return. They shall continue 
powerless names. As the Tory rulers of Massachusetts, the 
Olivers and Hutchinsons, fell into utter nothingness with 
the fall of their State, so shall these be in South Carolina as 
though they had never been. They shall wander, seeking 
bread from the slave they have sold. They shall sink to 
the bottom of the society they have ruled. Their glory has 
vanished away. Thus has God poured out His vial on the 
Seat of the Beast. Thus has its sin found it out, and its 
fate overtaken it. 

But this punishment had not been complete without the 
instrument by which it was perfected were considered. 
They were not captured by the "Western troops marching a 
hundred miles behind them, nor by white troops galloping 
up to the town. Their own slaves were left to receive the 
keys of the city, and to walk her streets as conquerors. 
Through them alone can her mayor find access to the provost 
marshal. They alone preserve its safety by night and its 
quiet by day. The slave is the ruler of the land. A few 
whites are associated with him, but he is the substantial 
master. From his hands the impoverished tyrants must sue 
for daily bread. How wonderfully is the Word of God ful- 
filled ! His truth, His ways, His word, are the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever. "The sons of them that afflicted 
Thee," yea, they themselves, " shall come bending unto 
thee ; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves 
down at the soles of thy feet." 



526 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 

We pause, oppressed by the sacred lesson. TThat are its 
teachings ? 

1. It teaches us that no greatness is aught against God. 
How these men once boasted ! How they defied the nation 
that made them great ! TYlth what insolent self-confidence 
they paraded the streets of their slave metropolis ! Not the 
patrician of Venice who stood beneath the corridors of the 
Doge's palace, where no plebeian was allowed to walk, was 
so contemptuous as the patricians of Charleston to their 
white and black slaves. But as Austrian soldiers freely 
tread those desolated pavements, so do the slaves of Charles- 
ton march where late their masters rode. 

Great and mighty are thy judgments, Lord God of 
Hosts. Thou bringest man to destruction, and sayest, Re- 
turn, ye children of men. His pride, as his years, are as 
nothing before Thee. At Thy rebuke he flees. At the 
breath of Thy nostrils he vanishes away. 

2. It teaches us the regeneration of the earth. Charles- 
ton is not to be destroyed. It is to be rebuilt in righteous- 
ness. The church of St. Michael, so long perverted to 
hideous uses of pride and sin, will become the ministrant of 
truth and love. That name is not inapt. Michael, the 
archangel, triumphed over the dragon. It was the favorite 
picture of ancient and enslaved Christendom. It betokened 
their deliverance from the grasp of their tyrants. So does 
it those who have heard for generations its bells with horror. 
To them Michael may mean their deliverer, the slayer of 
the dragon of Slavery. He has fought with the devil for the 
souls and bodies of these children of the Father, and has 
won their salvation. 

These freedmen shall renew that beautiful region in 
righteousness. They shall not build and another inhabit. 
The}' shall not plant and another eat, as they have for these 
hundreds of years, but they themselves shall long enjoy the 
work of their hands. Those excellent school-houses their 



THE FALL OE CHARLESTON. 527 

children shall enter. In those spacious churches they shall 
worship a God who shall be well pleased with their humble, 
happy offerings. Those marts shall nourish in legitimate 
traffic. They shall be rulers where they have been slaves. 
Happy, happy, happy day ! Already it breaks upon them. 
They look on their deliverers as the Messiah himself. And 
they are. Jesus is yet walking the earth incarnate in this 
Republic, breaking these heavy chains, opening these prison 
doors, and bringing to these, His children, the great and 
acceptable year of the Lord. 

3. Take warning from this awful punishment. If God 
spares not these, no more will He spare you, though He 
bear long with you. With these He has borne for two 
hundred years. Their iniquity is full. The day of ven- 
geance is come. And yet they are unrepentant. No sorrow 
fills those sinners' souls for their dreadful guilt. Those 
ministers, — Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, 
Papal, — are as bitter in their hatred of the first law of the 
Gospel as when they flourished in power and authority at 
the head of the community. We have seen no penitent 
bishop of that apostate Church. We have heard no churches 
moaning for their sins. They faithfully follow the words of 
our text : " They gnaw their tongues for pain, and blaspheme 
the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, 
and repent not of their deeds. " Beware lest you fall under 
like shocks, with like anguish and like impenitence. We 
may sin as fearfully against God here as they there. In 
your bodies, in your souls, in pride, in passion, in unbelief, 
in carnal-mindedness, in pursuit of the world. You may 
reject Christ, and be rejected of Him. As a church member, 
you may fall into the lowest hell. Many of them were such. 
So were the Israelites of the wilderness. So were Caiphas 
and Judas. So may you be. Watch, pray, strive, agonize, 
or 3^ou will plunge into sin, into everlasting destruction. 
Behold, the Judge standeth at the door ! 



528 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 

4. Remember that this great work is not accomplished. 
The saddest, most solemn, most religious message ever 
delivered by an American President, was spoken at his in- 
auguration by the great and good man, who, for the second 
term, has begun his arduous duties. Let me read to you 
some of those weighty words. 

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was 
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The 
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

How they infold the past, the present, the future. How 
they point to our only success — God and duty. Our armies 
in the field, our legislation in Congress, our principles at 
home, our God in all of these, through them all, above them 
all — these are our salvation. Only by adhering to the 
right shall we triumph — the whole right. We must 
uproot from our hearts that most unchristian and inhuman 
sentiment which makes us distinguish between man and 
man, between Christian brethren, on account of certain out- 
ward traits. These must be swept away, or the wrath of 
God will again rest upon us. The Seat of the Beast may 
be transferred from Charleston to Boston. We may feel 
this outpouring of divine displeasure. May this fate be 
averted by our earnest embracing of the whole truth as it is 
in Jesus. May our victories speedily be consummated, the 
greater victory of right be equally accomplished, and the 
Holy Spirit renew every heart, and all the land, in the purity, 
and peace, and brotherhood of heaven. 



JEFFERSON DAYIS AND PHAEAOEY 



And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, 
and stand before pharaoh, and sat unto him, thus saith the 
Lord God of the Hebrews, Let My people go, that they may 
serve Me. For I will at this time send all My plagues upon 
thy heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that 

THOU MAYEST KNOW THAT THERE IS NONE LIKE Me IN ALL THE EARTH. 

For now I will stretch out My hand, that I may smite thee 

AND THY PEOPLE WITH PESTILENCE ; AND THOU SHALT BE CUT OFF 
FROM THE EARTH. And IN VERY DEED FOR THIS CAUSE HAVE I RAISED 
THEE UP, FOR TO SHOW IN THEE My POWER ; AND THAT My NAME 
MAY BE DECLARED THROUGHOUT ALL THE EARTH." — Ex. ix. 13-16. 

ISTORY sometimes reproduces herself with pho- 
tographic accuracy. Past and present then are 
one. The very man who molded that dusty past 
after his image and likeness, seems to be stirring 
in the disturbed elements of the present, and fashioning 
them after the same form. Plutarch sought for such a par- 
allel between the chief men of Greece and Rome. The 
present Napoleon has set up his great ancestor and the first 
Caesar as of like lineaments, labors, and, he might have 
added, fate. Yet none so strikingly in their rise, rule, and 
fall resemble each other as Pharaoh and Jefferson Davis. 




* A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the State Fast, 
Thursday, April 12, 1865. 

34 ( 529 ) 



530 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

Living thousands of years apart, under different skies, insti- 
tutions, and religions, they have had a history and will have 
a fame well nigh identical. Their resemblances and con- 
trasts will be the theme for our consideration. 

We may properly engage in such contemplations, because 
the hosts of our Pharaoh are cast into the sea. On the tri- 
umphant shore stand victorious our Aaron and Moses, — 
Lincoln and Grant ; with their hardly less grand associates, 
Sherman and Sheridan, the Caleb and Joshua of the hour ; 
while a rescued country, and the liberated millions for whose 
especial deliverance God hath raised up both Pharaoh and 
Moses, lift up glad hands in exultant hallelujahs to Him 
whose right arm hath gotten Him the victory. 

With overpowering emotions of thankfulness and praise 
we crowd His courts to-day. Our fasting is turned into 
feasting. The bridegroom is with us ■ — how can we fast ? 
The bands of wickedness are broken — why should we fast? 

" Let the hills clap their hands, let the mountains rejoice, 
Let all the glad earth raise a jubilant voice." 

With our eyes fixed upon the ingulfing waves, that have 
drowned forever the great rebellion and its greater cause ; 
fixed yet more steadily and gratefully upon Him at whose 
command the waters disparted to let His people go over dry 
shod, and then closed eternally over their mighty oppres- 
sors, let us dwell upon the analogies our subject suggests. 
We shall find in them fresh cause to adore the wisdom, 
power, and goodness of Him who worketh all things after 
the counsel of His own will ; who, never interfering the 
least in the freedom of His creature, still holdeth the reins 
of sovereignty, and guideth the affairs of the universe. 

The proper way to contemplate the great struggle, which 
seems so near its end, is to take our stand by the side of 
God, and look upon it from His point of observation. We 
have, as a nation, chiefly observed it from the side of Union. 



AN HISTOEIC PARALLEL. 531 

To us it has been a struggle for sovereignty, for empire, for 
integrity of the national domain. The Flag has been the 
chief symbol of our sentiments and resolves. Nationality 
the inspiring energy of our souls. Not so with God. Our 
nationality is of small account with Him beside righteous- 
ness. He has inaugurated and conducted the war chiefly, 
we might almost say solely, in the interests of Liberty. He 
allowed, He encouraged our passion for the Union, because 
thus He could best work out His plan for emancipation. 

Then, too, we have dwelt almost constantly upon the 
rebellious leaders and their hosts. Their policy, their pro- 
gress, their prospects, have absorbed our minds. It is as 
if we studied the Mosaic deliverance from the movements 
of Pharaoh, his ministers and his people. That we never 
do. We look at it from its Mosaic, its divine, its slave side. 
We study the movements toward emancipation. We see 
Pharaoh not aggressive, but resisting the desires and decrees 
of God. The slave Moses, not his master, is the center 
around which those events are organized. So should it be 
here. Not the slaveholder but the slave, not the rebelling 
armies, but the organizing troops of Freedom ; not the stately 
pronunciamentos of Jefferson Davis, but the prayers and 
prophecies of the captive, should be now, will be the future 
nucleus around which this Thirty Years' War will inevitably 
revolve. The movements of abolitionism, political, social, 
religious, military, from the rise of Garrison to the consum- 
mation of Lincoln's election and proclamation, of Sherman's 
marches and Grant's victories, as well as the hostile forces 
in the Senate, society, the pulpit, and the field, all gather 
around that Christian bondman. They are the chosen people 
of God who for three centuries have groaned in their prison- 
houses, and whose liberation and exaltation, not our Union 
nor our liberties, are the great, almost the sole cause, of the 
outstretching of His arm, and the more than Mosaic miracles 
that pass before our half-observant eyes. 



532 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

Taking our position, therefore, by His side, and looking 
on the war with His eyes, we see it to be, as all Europe sees 
it, a war of God for emancipation. 

Three difficulties stood in His way : the words and con- 
struction of the Constitution ; the aversion of the North to 
abolitionism, and the purpose of the South to prevent it. Each 
of these seemed strong. All must yield, or be crushed to 
powder beneath His omnipotent march. How can they be 
removed or reduced ? Only by strengthening the last. 

The dread of touching the Constitution had become a dis- 
ease. The people feared it, as our fathers did their idols — 
the work of their own hands. They said, The Constitution 
forbids us to touch slavery where it is. We cannot, we 
will not, violate that instrument. The slaveholders' will 
alone compelled them to forget their idol and fear God. They 
or it must die. 

Behind and beneath this lay a horror of touching the 
slave. "Emancipation! haven't we opposed it from the 
beginning ? The black man will become our equal, our 
master. He is a brute, an ape ; does not want freedom, 
will not work, will not fight." Mr. Ten Eyck, senator of 
of New Jersey, declared in the Senate, after the war had 
begun, that if slavery was abolished in the District of Co- 
lumbia, the. slaves would be pouring down upon the North, 
and his State would not take care of them. He has just lost 
his reelection because he would not give them their rights 
in his own State. This aversion was profound, was univer- 
sal. How could it be overcome ? Only by the firmness of 
the Southern purpose. The lesser evil can only be over- 
come by strengthening the greater, and God gives it that 
power. For this purpose He raised up their strong leader, 
and endowed him with extraordinary nature, in order that 
against His will these fears and prejudices of the nation 
might be dashed to pieces, and our glorious end be sub- 
limely accomplished. 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 533 

The study of His character is, therefore, the study of all 
this gigantic movement. It was said, a year ago, " The 
rebellion is Jefferson Davis. His will is its sole support 
and life." It was so from the beginning. It has been more 
and more so to its ignominious end. 

Consider then, — 

I. The resemblances between our Pharaoh and the one 
who was the needful point of resistance in God's first war 
for emancipation. 

II. The end God had in view in raising him up. 

The parallel is seen in their freedom, their character, their 
work, and their fate. 

1. They were alike in freedom of action. For this pur- 
pose God raised them up, that He might show forth His 
power in them. Yet they themselves freely elected the 
course they pursued. Many theories concerning the condi- 
tion of Pharaoh's will have been propounded by students of 
his history. Some have argued that his freedom of will was 
supernaturally suspended, so that he was a mere machine 
worked by Almighty power for its own ends. Others have 
thought that he expressed the ordinary relation of every 
man's will to that of God, though under extraordinary cir- 
cumstances of expansion. The last are right in this position, 
though they err in saying that this relation is the actual 
absorption of his volition into the volition of God. 

The truth may be clearly seen in the parallel which is 
before us. Jefferson Davis has freely resisted the most 
pressing and repeated appeals of God. Never has he felt 
that the mission he was set to do was one forced upon a 
reluctant will, or one that constrained that will to any course 
other than it freely and enthusiastically accepted as its 
highest, strongest, only choice. In him, as in the great 
Egyptian, the divine intent was directly the contrary of 
his own. Their purpose was to aggrandize themselves, 
each by retaining a mighty mass of slaves, the one to pre- 



534 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

serve and increase the glory of his kingdom, the other to 
found an empire that should absorb the continent, and be, 
as was that of Pharaoh's then, the leading power of the 
world. God's plan was to liberate His enslaved children, 
and to employ them in the extension of His kingdom through- 
out the earth. Their wills, then, are and were precisely 
like yours and mine — like the humblest of their retainers, 
the most degraded of their slaves. 

God gave them this freedom of action, but gave it, as 
He gives everything, subject to the laws of its constitution. 
One of those laws is, that exercise, in whatever direction, 
strengthens the faculty in that direction. Had they yielded 
honestly but a little, they would soon have yielded all. Their 
resistance intensified resistance, so that by the laws of their 
nature, that is, by God the Creator and Sustainer of all law, 
they both hardened their hearts, and yet God hardened them 
also. He allowed those natural laws to work their perfect 
work in them, because that thus the more fully could His 
own ends be accomplished. 

To go further than this, is to make God the Author of 
their deeds, and so of their sins. It is to annihilate their 
responsibility and their humanity. It is to make them ves- 
sels of wrath fitted for destruction, with no more sin or 
punishment in them than in the fire which has devoured the 
palaces of Charleston and Richmond. Such is not the teach- 
ing of Scripture. Such is not the feeling of every heart. 
They are responsible, they have sinned, they are punished. 
They are men of like passions with ourselves, who have 
rejected the counsel of God against themselves. With their 
own hands they bound themselves, they kept themselves 
bound to the potter's wheel. Of themselves have they al- 
lowed God to make them vessels of wrath fitted for destruc- 
tion. As they have sown, thus do they also reap. 

2. Their characters are alike. 

This wOrk is to be accomplished by human agents, acting 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 535 

among men, and according to the nature of man. It was as 
easy for God to have taken up the children of Israel, their 
wives and their little ones, in their beds, and to have trans- 
ported them bodily into the land of Canaan, as it was to 
work the wonders that He did for their liberation. He could 
have slain Pharaoh at the beginning as easily as at the end 
of the conflict. He could have so inspired the Egyptians 
with terror, or whelmed them in destruction, that they 
would thrust out their slaves as readily at the first as at the 
last. But He never violates human nature while working 
with or against it. He respects most carefully the freedom' 
of His creatures, whether He saves or slays them. He had 
two ends to accomplish — the development of manhood in 
His people, so that they might become fit for the sovereignty 
which He designed for them, and the destruction of Egyp- 
tian pride and purpose, so that they should voluntarily let 
His people go. To achieve these ends, the progress of 
events must be gradual. They would not yield freely at 
first, neither would the slaves assume their rights and duties 
and burdens at first freely. Moses found this fact prevent- 
ing his success, when "he supposed his brethren would have 
understood how that God by His hand would deliver them ; 
but they understood not." How precisely similar was our 
conduct to our Moses. There must, therefore, be one man 
whose nature is so firm, whose mind is so clear, that he 
sees the possible and intended end of every movement in 
the opposite direction, and who is set like the eternal hills 
to resist their progress. Upon that rock shall the purposes 
of the people be broken. Upon it shall those of God be 
established. 

The characters of these men are alike in three respects. 
(1.) Their clear perception of the end from their beginning. 
(2.) Their steadiness of purpose. (3.) Their power to de- 
velop such strength and steadiness in others. 

(1.) Pharaoh, like Jefferson Davis, saw that the first step 



536 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

toward emancipation, if not resisted, would inevitably lead 
thither. When Moses asks for a three days' camp-meeting 
around the base of Sinai, an old and familiar usage of the 
Egyptians, the quick-sighted king detects the whole scope 
of the petition. He instantly answers, " Who is the Lord, 
that I should obey His voice to let Israel go ? I know not 
the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." And when they 
humbly renew their request, declaring "The God of the 
Hebrews hath met with us : let us go, we pray thee, three 
days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto our God, 
lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword ; " 
he savagely retorts, "Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, 
let the people from their works. Get you unto your bur- 
dens." And he instantly bound their burdens the heavier, 
ordering their overseers to take away the straw, but not to 
diminish the tale of bricks. 

So, when the public conscience had grown in this land 
that it began loudly to demand of the slaveholders the abo- 
lition of slavery, Jefferson Davis stood forth chief in audacity, 
coolness, and firmness to resist its demands, and by the aid 
of supple tools, among whom, alas! was our own great states- 
man, he bound upon the already heavily-burdened slave the 
additional atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. There was 
a feeble ray of relief before. If they reached our borders 
they were substantially free. Now the human blood-hounds 
scented them through the streets of every Northern city, 
and in the lanes and fields of our most rural communities. 
A gray-haired minister of Jesus Christ, stationed close beside 
us, was compelled to flee for his life, as were the African 
bishops Cyril and Athanasius from Alexandria, and Paul 
from Damascus. The cry rose yet more bitterly to heaven. 
Gates hundreds of miles thick suddenly shut in upon them, 
grating harsh thunder in their affrighted ears. 

Each thus early apprehended the full significance of the 
movement, and sought to stifle it in its birth. This per- 






AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 537 

ception of the intent of the Hebrews was stimulated to 
greater ferocity with every miracle. So, since the nation 
put its authoritative word in the mouth of its Executive, 
has the heart of our Pharaoh become the more hardened 
against the liberation of his slaves. He saw its end when 
Mr. Lincoln was elected, and avowed his purpose to resist 
it. He seceded when as yet no overt act had been com- 
mitted, and in spite of our protestations of faithfulness to 
imaginary constitutional demands, that were like the beg- 
gings of Moses before the Lord, unlike, in this respect, that 
our President made his before Pharaoh; a degradation Moses 
never reached. He saw that allowing the Territories to be 
free, was abolishing slavery. The little favor the Eepublican 
party was constrained to beg, the occupancy of the wilder- 
ness by Liberty, notwithstanding its profuse promises that 
it would not harm the gigantic sin where it ruled and rev- 
eled ; that the fugitive slave bill should be yet more firmly 
supported ; that the four millions of captives should have 
no hope of release, but should be given over to the extremest 
cruelty of their oppressors ; that the coastwise slave-trade 
should still go forward, and the slave-masters yet rule the 
nation ; in spite of the promise to amend our Constitution so 
as to prevent the Northern conscience from ever disturbing 
the iniquity, the Pharaoh of the South saw the end. He 
knew that wilderness inheritance insured the ultimate pos- 
session of the whole land. He knew the recognition of their 
political inferiority must end in their political annihilation. 
He knew that acknowledging the black anywhere as equal, 
as would be the case in the recognition of Liberia and 
Hayti, would result in his universal equality. Therefrom 
he instantly and resolutely ordered secession. He visited 
Richmond and Charleston, and the other chief centers of this 
sin, and organized revolt. He gave the diabolic enthusiasm 
the needful energies of his potent will. 

(2.) In strength and steadiness of will they are alike. 



538 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

Pharaoh never actually yielded to their petitions. Several 
times, when great reverses came upon him, he felt like re- 
lenting a little. Once he got so far as to agree to let them 
go, providing they went without their families and their 
flocks ; but even that he repented of, and they left, at last, 
without any direct orders from him. 

So has it been with our Pharaoh. In some of the great 
reverses that have befallen his arms, he has half inclined to 
substitute a temporary system of serfdom for his pet horror 
of slavery. To win the recognition of England and France, 
to secure needful help to his armies, he has almost said, 
" I will give these slaves a partial liberty ; " knowing that 
after the crisis had passed he could easily resubjugate them 
to slavery. And once, when the thick darkness of disaster 
covered his whole land, save the cabins of the slaves, where 
the light that shone upon Goshen was again shining, when 
the Mississippi was lost and Georgia cleft in twain, and the 
enemy lay around his capital, and darkness that could be 
felt, that was fearfully felt, pressed down upon every rebell- 
ious heart, then he partially relented. Then he said, "Let 
us arm the slaves, and free those we arm." Not free their 
wives and children, but themselves. Let them go free for 
a little season till this calamity be overpast. God repelled 
the insulting proposal, and prevented the attempt. His 
heart became hardened against even this compliance, and 
he awaited in sullenness the blow that annihilated him. He 
knew, military man as he is, that Richmond must soon fall. 
He knew that the last stroke would soon be dealt. He had 
seen these movements of the Delivering God become more 
and more severe. Savannah had fallen, South Carolina had 
been traversed, Charleston and Columbia were in ashes, the 
enemy was gathering on every side of the doomed capital ; 
still he stood firm. He received his death-blow in the 
church of his idolatry, at the altars of a false god, whom 
he had set up in the place of the true God and our Savior 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 539 

Jesus Christ, and calling him by that holy- name, was fer- 
vently adoring the hideous idol. At these altars of a foul 
and bloody Moloch did he fall. Here did the true and 
eternal God of liberty and love smite our Pharaoh. Fitting 
was the hour and spot of his destruction. As Caesar fell 
under the statue of the rival he had slain, as Napoleon fell 
on the fields most consecrated of all in Europe to the liberty 
he had betrayed, as Judas fell in the very spot which the 
price of his treason was to purchase, so fell Jefferson Davis 
in the very church that for generations had set up a false god 
as the true, and that had steadily and rapidly increased the 
foulness and ferociousness of its idolatry ; on the Sabbath, 
too, which had been so horribly profaned by him and his 
with pretended worship of a Savior whose precepts they 
had most fearfully despised and rejected. "Just and true 
are Thy ways, thou King of Saints." 

Yet here, as in his prototype, he remained unshaken. No 
cry escaped those thin, pallid lips ; no quivering of that firm- 
set mouth ; he leaves the church as calmly as he had en- 
tered it. He leaves the city of his pride and hope with as 
little outward tremor as when he rode in, triumphant, four 
years before. He offers no freedom to his slaves. They 
take it. Just as the Israelites took their actual liberty, 
without the order of Pharaoh, who would have granted the 
three days' journey, but not emancipation, so do ours 
theirs. Their unbending tyrant gives no sign of submis- 
sion. He falls, like Satan, upon his eternal ruin, unsub- 
dued, unterrified. 

(3.) Like Pharaoh, he possessed the power of infusing 
his strength into others. That monarch often felt the will 
of his subordinates failing him. Once and again they en- 
treat him to yield to the demands of Moses. "How long," 
they say, " shall this man be a snare unto us ? Let the 
men go, that they may serve the Lord their God ; knowest 
thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ? " But Pharaoh's 



540 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

heart did not relent. He still refused to hear the voice of 
God. He strengthened his subjects to endure the vials of 
wrath which Omnipotence was pouring constantly upon 
them. 

Even so has our Pharaoh been entreated again and again 
by his people to make terms with the enemy, even at the 
sacrifice of slavery. Governor Brown of Georgia, Senator 
Hunter, Vice-President Stephens, and not a few of her gen- 
erals, have been advocates for peace and Union. But he 
stood firm. One word he writes as his sole orders to the 
embassy that met our President at Fortress Monroe but two 
months ago — " Independence." * And he inspires that 
embassy with his resolution. Every one of them saw the 
impossibility of carrying out that purpose. They were 
ready to yield. Not so he. He compelled them to his 
service ; he made Johnson, and has just made Lee fight his 
battles, after they had acknowledged that even victory could 
not save them. That salty upon Fort Steadman, that three 
days' battle behind Petersburg, were all compelled by Jef- 
ferson Davis. Like Pharaoh, he rallied his hosts for the 
last encounter. Perhaps like him he will still make another 
desperate assault upon God and Liberty. Perhaps the Red 
Sea, where his hosts and his power shall perish, has not yet 
been reached. The midnight cry in Richmond, and flight 
from its mighty walls, may not be the last of this tyrant. 
We shall see. But we shall see that if he gathers his le- 
gions for a new resistance, and is again overthrown, he will 
still die haughty, stern, defiant. His allies may cower. 
He never. No such correspondence will pass from him to 
President Lincoln as General Lee wrote to General Grant. 
He dies as he has lived, with firm and steadfast mind, fully 
set to do evil. These three qualities of far-sightedness, 
steadiness, and power to inspire others with strength, are 
striking counterparts of his great original. 

* See Note XIX. 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 541 

3. But their work is as analogous as their characters. 
For what purpose did God raise them up ? To show forth 
His power, and that His name might be declared through- 
out all the earth. How remarkably do their histories com- 
pare. The first has been famous throughout the earth and 
throughout all generations. Other Pharaohs have ruled in 
Egypt. Some built pyramids, some temples, some ran 
through Syria and the East with their all-conquering armies. 
Some erected gigantic statues, which still remain for the 
astonishment of modern eyes. Yet all are forgotten beside 
this otherwise unknown king. Some suppose he was the 
great Ramesis, the Napoleon of his dynasty. But no proof 
of this is extant. And if it is so, not for his deeds of war, 
or government, or architecture, or piety is he famous. In 
these he is utterly unknown. Only as the one whom God 
raised up, by whom to free His people, is he ever heard of 
among men. 

Thus is Jefferson Davis to be known ; thus only. Men 
knew him before as an astute politician, as a brave and 
accomplished soldier, as a gentleman in culture and bear- 
ing, as the easy master of his party and its administration 
of the government. They have known him since his usur- 
pation as one who is perfect master of himself; who can 
express the most abhorrent ideas in the calmest, strong- 
est, and most elegant language ; who can organize armies 
in every part of the vast region that recognizes his sway ; 
who can make every State legislature and his Con- 
gress, in spite of malice, and envy, and failure even, em- 
body his will ; who can so influence the courts of Europe 
that they covertly recognize his embassadors, and one of 
their first statesmen can say, in an extorted admiration, 
" He has created a nation." It is not too much to say 
that the accomplished, courtly, sagacious Davis has ap- 
peared before the world to vastly greater advantage than 
our rude, stammering Moses, who only utters a finished 



542 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

sentence by mistake, and stumblingly presents the demands 
for which alone he too has been raised up. 

Yet with all his abilities and his fame, Jefferson Davis 
will be known in history only as the one through whose 
needful resistance God wrought the liberty of His people. 
For this purpose God hath raised him up. 

How necessary it was that Pharaoh's heart should be 
strong. Had he yielded early, the Israelites would have 
made their journey and returned ; and so His purposes and 
promises would have been defeated. He must refuse the 
first pleas in order that the divine end shall be accomplished. 
His people were not ready to go. The great and terrible 
wilderness made them naturally affrighted. They still 
loved the flesh-pots of Egypt. They feared the enemy be- 
hind and before ; they had but little if any confidence in 
the leader, and he as little in himself. The Egyptians would 
not have aided their departure with the needful gifts. The 
work must grow. It must grow around a point of resist- 
ance as well as a center of resolve. Moses and Pharaoh 
both developed gigantically in the long conflict — a conflict 
certainly of months, probably of years. So have Lincoln 
and Davis. Had the usurper yielded, as most expected 
that he would at the beginning of the war, the great pur- 
pose of God would have been unaccomplished. That pur- 
pose, be it ever kept in mind, was Emancipation. Nothing 
short of this would satisfy His will. To bring us up to the 
willingness to proclaim it, He must make that strong will 
stronger in resisting every attempt at any other settlement. 
He does not alter the will, he does not deprive it of its essen- 
tial freedom. It chooses sin. He nerves it so that it per- 
sists in sin. It would still prefer it. There would be no 
inward conversion in him, as there is not to-day in the sub- 
jugated aristocracy of Richmond, in Lee and Ewell, and the 
imprisoned leaders of their armies. He allows its free 
choice to continue, but gives its strength strictly accord- 
ing to its law by which it abides firm in its free election. 



AN HISTOEIC PARALLEL. 543 

Note how often this appeal has been made and resisted, 
because God's ends would not have been attained in its 
acceptance. 

First came the Peace Congress, before the first inaugura- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln, that offered to make the Crittenden res- 
olutions the basis of settlement — extending slavery to the 
Pacific, and confirming it in the States where it existed, by 
constitutional amendment. Four fifths of the South would 
have accepted that. Davis said, " No : — Independence." 
Charles Francis Adams next offered like amendments in 
Congress, with the cooperation of Mr. Seward and Mr. Lin- 
coln. The firm refusal of Davis alone prevented the mis- 
erable humiliation of their passage. 

Mr. Lincoln next makes every concession and promise in 
his inaugural ; still he is defiant. 

We seek to relieve a starving garrison, taking bread, not 
balls, to their help. He orders his men to fire upon the 
merchant ship, and fire at the same time the Southern 
heart. 

The President issues the riot act, and calls upon them to 
lay down their arms, promising universal pardon. They 
and their leader laugh him to scorn. 

Bull Run follows, and they exult the more. A long win- 
ter of pride and luxury succeeds, during which they rest 
assured of victory. The spring opens with the fall of Fort 
Donelson and the capture and government of New Orleans, 
in which events appear almost simultaneously before the 
public eye, the three representatives of our naval, mili- 
tary, and moral victories, — equals in honor and in fame, — 
Farragut, Grant, and Butler. 

Still Davis is unyielding. McClellan's defeats confirm 
his confidence. Then we are forced to issue the Proclama- 
tion. With how much hesitation that word of God was 
uttered ; with how great hostility on the part of the nation, 
history will painfully record. The President declares, just 



544 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND. PHARAOH. 

before he makes it, that it is like the Pope's bull against 
the comet. He holds it back for a year, and would have 
held it back till to-day, but for the bloody scourges of an 
angry God. Even then it gave the rebels time to come to 
their allegiance. Strong in his faith and purpose, their 
Pharaoh ridiculed the offer and the threat. 

Again the spring opens dark with disasters to our cause, 
that he might be confirmed in his resistance and we in our 
duty. Drafts are called for. Riots break out. The enemy 
get the reins of government in their hands in New York 
and elsewhere. Gold goes up. Business goes down. What 
next ? " Arm your colored men ! " " Impossible ! " 
" Arm ! " says God. " I will not ! ;? say you. " Treat 
these niggers as men, as fellow-soldiers. ' Is thy servant 
a dog, that he should do this thing ? ' " " Arm ! " sounds 
solemnly from the voice of God. And we most reluctantly 
obeyed. Still we said we will arm them as servants, not 
as soldiers.. Ten dollars a month shall they have, and none 
shall hold rank above the sergeant. They enlist, they fight, 
they die, they compel our unwilling admiration. Still they 
are not paid as soldiers. Congress refuses to pay them. 
The President opposes it. In answer to our partial faith- 
fulness God gives us partial success. Yicksburg falls, and 
Gettysburg repels the invader. But Chattanooga is be- 
sieged, Louisiana is overrun, Fredericksburg is defiant. 
The spring opens with Chattanooga ours. But Banks is 
repelled with great slaughter, and the coast of North Caro- 
lina largely retaken. Grant prepares to move out on his 
campaign, now so triumphantly concluding. Before he goes 
he demands of Congress equal pay for his soldiers. Some 
of you will remember that I preached on the occasion of 
his departure, on " Why he would succeed," and laid that 
down as the corner-stone — the making of all his men equal 
in their pay.* More than his genius is that justice. Still 

* See p. 393. 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 545 

Davis hardens his heart ; and last summer, when his emissa- 
ries plotted for peace at Niagara Falls, our President had 
grown to the stature of the divine will. Never before. 
Peace on the basis not of Union alone, this had always 
been his previous error ; but also on that of Emancipation. 
Then came success after success, — at Atlanta, at the polls, 
at Savannah. 

Still the chief was defiant. Till but two months ago it 
seemed as if this divine demand might be sacrificed. Had 
he said to his commissioners with Mr. Lincoln, " Peace and 
Union," the country miglyt have compelled the President to 
submit to the ignomy. Leading abolitionists, like The 
Tribune, were more clamorous for peace than for liberty. 
But God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and lie said, " No 
Union." Hence no peace. Even when Sherman had reached 
North Carolina, and Grant was about to move on the enemy's 
works, Davis proposes to talk of peace, but with no offers 
of Union. Independence is still his cry ; to it he clings, to 
the bitter end. Then comes his overthrow as in a night, and 
with him is buried, in an eternal grave, not only disunion 
but slavery. "For this purpose I have raised thee up, that 
I might show forth My power through thee." 

My children shall go free. Despite their timidity, despite 
the unwillingness of the people of the North, despite the 
hellish purpose of their masters, they shall go free. The 
tyrant's firmness shall breed strength in the heart of his 
enemy, until the word peace, in its mildest form, when pro- 
posed by their chief general as the basis of his submission, 
is carefully excluded by his conqueror. No terms, but mil- 
itary ; not peace, but surrender. 

Thus has Jefferson Davis been lifted up before all the 
world. Thus has every eye in Europe, peasant's or prince's, 
seen the strong-willed enemy of God steadfastly resisting 
His divine decrees, and manifesting the very power of God, 
because He thus constrains the further and full expression 
35 



546 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

of that power, to its glorious accomplishment in the com- 
plete deliverance of His long enslaved people. 

4. Their fates are similar. 

Whether Pharaoh perished in the Red Sea or not, he per- 
ished from history at that hour of his overthrow ; so whether 
Davis is caught and hung, or escapes and dies in exile, or 
at home, his career as a leader and a man of influence is 
closed. No longer will kings and emperors accept his min- 
isters as their guests and friends. No longer will Earl 
Russell answer respectfully and officially their formal notes. 
No longer will the Pope send him letters, and the emperors 
of Africa — congenial tyrants — their best blooded steeds. 
No longer will his name make the theaters of Oxford and 
Cambridge reecho with applause. No longer will parliament- 
arians argue for his recognition, and all aristocratic Europe 
envy him his dignities. No longer will commissions signed 
with his name protect pirates upon the seas, and robbers 
upon our borders. 

Jefferson Davis is no more. The President of the Con- 
federate States, head of a million soldiers, the pet and pride 
of eight millions of supporters, is a panting fugitive, glad 
to hide his diminished head in the depths of the forest, in 
the huts of the slave. His name is cast out and trodden 
under foot of men. Let him live. Napoleon at St. Helena 
was a far bitterer pill to his European worshipers, than if 
he had been guillotined on the Place de la Concorde. So 
will Davis be in the obscurity of London or Paris. His end 
is reached. The Red Sea of blood has drowned his hosts, 
his power, his fame. Let him rot in a living grave. 

Thus has God shown that He is the perpetual Master of • 
the world. Whether on the banks of the Nile or the Mis- 
sissippi, whether thousands of years ago or to-day, whoever 
of His oppressed people calls upon Him, He will hear, He will 
answer. He is the same God, visitiDg the iniquities of the 
fathers upon the children to the third and fourth genera- 



AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 547 

tions of them that hate Him, and showing mercy unto 
thousands of them that love Him and that keep His com- 
mandments. 

Consider, in conclusion, 

II. What are the ends God had in view in this display 
of His power. 

1. The first, of course, was to release millions of His be- 
loved children from the awful bondage under which they 
had groaned. Of this we have no need of further words. 
Whoever believes in God believes in His hatred of oppres- 
sion — and such oppression — not the mere subjugation, but 
the sale of His children ; not the sale only, but their sepa- 
ration also ; not their separation merely, but their subjec- 
tion to unlicensed lust. The only wonder is that He with- 
held His arm so long ; that He could listen for generations 
to their dreadful cries, and not appear on the clouds of 
heaven taking vengeance on their oppressors. He has thus 
appeared. Fire has fallen from heaven, in the curvetting 
shell of General Gilmore, upon the Sodom of the iniquity. 
Fire has consumed its kindred Gomorrah with its destruc- 
tion. He has avenged His own elect, who have cried day 
and night unto Him. 

2. But God's purposes in this redemption is to confer 
great honor on this people. Many sneeringly ask, Is not a 
white man as good as a black man ? I am afraid we shall 
be compelled to answer, " No." Were the Egyptians as 
good as the Israelites ? They thought themselves much 
the better, and treated with ineffable scorn, and shunned, 
with what they thought, instinctive horror, their neighbor, 
the Hebrew. Yet who were highest in the thought, and 
love, and purpose of God ? Who in the history of man ? 
Where are the Egyptians ? Where not the Hebrews ? So 
with us. Which of our peoples has exhibited most of the 
elements of goodness ? Which has the most faith, the 
most patience, the most long-suffering, the most charity ? 



548 JEFEERSOX DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

Which obey most strikingly those commands of the Gos- 
pel, " When ye are reviled revile not again ; Bless them 
that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you ; 
Love your enemies?" I have talked with many a fugitive 
and freedman, and never heard one breathe a word of harsh- 
ness against his oppressors. When telling the story of 
their sufferings, horrible as they were, no railing accusation 
was raised, none was felt against those worse than murder- 
ers. What does all this betoken ? It shows us where the 
sweetest fountains of grace are in this land. It shows us 
who are most like the apostles and martyrs of the primi- 
tive ages. These did not surpass our martyrs in faith 
and love, as they could not in suffering. They shall 
be exalted into equal honor. God intends to make that 
the choice blood of America. Not our proud Anglo-Saxon, 
not the Celtic, or German, or any other of the representa- 
tive races, shall climb to the top of American society, but 
the African. He has the most of Christ. He is the nearest 
God. If he maintain his piety in prosperity that he has in 
adversity, if he grows in grace as he grows in culture, 
then shall he be the leaven of our too hard and impious 
mass. He shall season our worldliness, selfishness, and 
irreligion with his heavenly salt. In humility shall he be 
raised to sovereignty. 

As the Israelites were delivered, not merely because of 
God's hatred of slavery, and sympathy with its victims, 
but^ because they were His chosen people, out of whom He 
intended to make for Himself a name in all the earth ; so 
has He delivered these from their house of bondage, that 
He might set them among princes ; that He might make 
for Himself a people humble, holy, faithful ; the best ex- 
pression on earth of His divinest nature. 

3. He has emancipated them in order that He may thus 
reunite all mankind in one blessed brotherhood of blood and 
love. A descendant of this same Pharaoh gladly accepted 



AN HISTOKIC PAEALLEL. 549 

the hand and the throne of a descendant of these same 
slaves, and lives in history only because of this alliance. 
So shall it be in America. The daughters of these haughty 
Southerners, who have shrunk from their touch as leprous, 
shall yet gratefully accept the offers of the sons of their 
father's slaves, and their parents and themselves shall feel 
their house exalted by the alliance. That day is near at 
hand. Not ten years may pass ere such marriages will be 
frequent. So completely will societ}^ be reversed, and the 
true relations of humanity appear in that clime. 

In fact, their independence could have hardly delayed this 
result, so ripe was that region for that change. It will be 
precipitated with a rapidity that will astonish all scoffers 
and infidels when once peace resumes her sway, under the 
banner of Union and Abolitionism. Gentlemen and ladies, 
as well as the poorer classes, will delight in such legal, 
happy, God-appointed relations. And the despised blood 
will become the honored and even enviable blood of all that 
region. Thus will He who has delivered them crown them 
with abundant honor. 

Let us fear and praise the God of these Hebrews. Let 
us be of those Egyptians who joined themselves to them. 
Let us behold the clear revelation of His will and purpose 
in the rapidly unfolding events of the hour. Those who 
four years ago were slaves, are now free ; who were forbid- 
den in Massachusetts to bear arms, now hold Savannah, 
Charleston, and Richmond under their guns ; who then were 
shut out from the alphabet, are now the hungriest and most 
progressive students in the land ; who then were not ac- 
counted men, are now demanding their equal rights as citi- 
zens, and will soon enjoy all the prerogatives of manhood. 

Be valiant in this cause. Let not the mistaken policy of 
our President, as revealed in his speech of this week,* 

* The last address Mr. Lincoln made only advocated partial and very 
limited negro suffrage. It was the indorsement of Governor Banks's 
policy in New Orleans instead of General Butler's. 



550 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 

become the law of the land. May he who will be always 
known as the Liberator, be also known as the Regenerator. 
Let not those rebellious States be reorganized without 
conferring the right of suffrage on every loyal man. 
Twelve thousand half loyal whites of Louisiana refuse the 
petition of six thousand thoroughly loyal colored men to 
give them equal suffrage. Shame on this nation if, after 
having been led so far in the way of duty, when the mo- 
ment of success dawns, it shall cast itself back into the 
mire of its own sins. Shame on it, if having won its 
triumphs by the valor of men of color, it shall refuse those 
men that franchise which it bestows on any Northern 
traitor who has done his uttermost to oppose the govern- 
ment, and even upon the Southern rebel, on his taking the 
oath of allegiance — an act of easy and frequent perjury.* 

Shame, too, on the Church that seeks to separate these 
best children of God from their prouder but less pious 
brethren. South and North, in Boston and Charleston, 
there should be no such thing known as a white or a 
colored Church. All should be knit together in love. All 
must be, all will be. 

Let us then, my friends, hail the future. Our Pharaoh 
is perished. He steals, a homeless wanderer, through the 
regions he so lately ruled. He is of the past. We are 
of the future. The redeemed Israelites remain — the re- 
deemed nation. May we not, because of our unbelief and 
unwillingness .to obey God's most clear commands, be 
compelled to wander forty years in the wilderness, as 
we have for the seventy years that are past ; but may 
we instantly recognise and obey His will, so that our 
Canaan shall be speedily gained, and our rest shall be 
glorious. 

* This was the policy so persistently and fatally followed out hy Lin- 
coln's successor. 




THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR 
OF AMERICA/ 



" Thy gentleness hath made me great." — Ps. xviii. 35. 

" He saved others, himself he cannot save." — Matt, xxvii. 42. 

''All nations shall call him blessed." — Ps. lxxii. 17. 




HE appalling deed of the last G-ood Friday begins 
to put on the fixed lineaments of the past. As 
that face and form, then so full of life, are frozen 
in death, so he who animated them is fast becom- 
ing solidified and shapen in the unchanging marble of history. 
Still standing in the horrible shadow, how can we carve 
the features of the immortal dead ? The chisel shakes in our 
trembling hand. The rain of sorrow blinds our eyes. In 
the ghastly darkness, we but faintly discern the spiritual 
form that has so suddenly and forever vanished from the 
eyes of man. He, who but yesterday was the center of all 
human observation ; whose every word, as he himself de- 
clared but three nights before his death, was in no unim- 
portant sense a national decree ; from whom were the issues 

i 
* A Memorial Discourse on the Character and Career of Abraham Lin- 
coln : delivered in the North Kussell Street M. E. Church, Boston, on 
the Occasion of his Assassination, Sunday, April 23, 1865. 

(551) 



552 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

of life and death to the imperious leaders of the rebellion 
and their too willing subjects ; upon whose course foreign 
potentates fastened watchful eyes, and foreign peoples were 
yet more intent ; the foremost man in all the world, — now 
lies he low in his shroud of blood. A nation weeps around 
his bier. The world bemoans his fate. 

Never before did so wide and bitter a cry pierce the skies. 
Never before were the heads of so many millions waters, 
and their eyes fountains of tears, weeping day and night for 
the slain of the daughter of their people. The great day of 
the Church has become yet more solemn in the annals of 
America. Let not the 15th of April be considered the day 
of his death, but let Good Friday be its anniversary. For 
then the fatal blow was struck. He died to the conscious 
world ere the day had died. We should make it a movable 
fast, and ever keep it beside the cross and the grave of our 
blessed Lord, in whose service and for whose gospel he 
became a victim and a martyr. 

That crime I cannot dwell upon in such an hour. The 
criminal is not the object of my revenge. Justice will 
demand his death, to whom no less would it be a mercy ; 
for it would shut him from the sight of the race he had dis- 
honored and the earth he had polluted. Not the awful trans- 
gressor nor his crime, not even the gigantic abomination of 
which this deed was the natural and inevitable fruit, shall 
becloud the hour. Let us look the rather upon him whose 
earthly work is done ; not upon his form, laid out in "long- 
stretching death/' that is slowly moving amid tearful myri- 
ads, through mighty cities, by the side of inland seas, across 
yet vaster seas of billowy or level green, to its beloved 
home in the heart of the land, fit resting-place for him who 
shall ever live in the heart of the nation ; but upon the 
features of his life, that we may learn why he grew to such 
a hight, and how we may, in our humbler sphere, attain an 
equal perfection. 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 553 

The character and career of Abraham Lincoln will there- 
fore be the appropriate subject of our mournful meditations. 
These are harmoniously united. His career was but the 
flowering of his character, — his character the seed and 
germ of his career. Extraordinary circumstances gave that 
nature a fulness of opportunity for its development such as 
has most rarely, probably never before, fallen to the lot of 
man ; but they did not make the man. The most fruitful 
ground does not create the character of the seed it multiplies. 
It imparts a possibility of richness and fulness that inferior 
earths cannot afford. Still their own nature abides, and the 
oak is an oak, the ivy an ivy, in the richest as well as in the 
poorest soils. 

His character was as complete when wrapped in the vesi- 
cles of his early privacy as in the grand uplifts of its wonder- 
ful consummations. As a child, a youth, an industrious, 
studious, obscure workman, a lawyer and politician of Illinois, 
he displayed the peculiar qualities which in his higher sphere 
bore such abundant fruit. His first speech was as brief, as 
witty, as compact, as simple-minded, and as good-natured as 
his last.* 

For these traits he is not to be praised. He was created 
in the frame of soul that he ever exhibited. For their 
culture he alone merits eulogy. 

God needs various workmen for his varied work. And as 
a wise master-builder uses a great variety of material for his 
manifold edifice, and works this material into a yet greater 
variety of forms, that the whole may be a unit of perfection, 
so does the Divine Master-builder in His infinitely grander 
structures of soul, erected on earth for time and for eternity. 

The stately cathedral has its massy stone, lying in huge 
boulders under its visible foundations, rising in shapen 
blocks to its roof and pinnacles, carved in daintiest delicacy 

* See Note XX. 



554 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

around its pillars, doors, and altar. This solid earth it 
lightens with graceful forms of wood, as though the heart 
of oak % blossomed like the gentlest flower into fragrant 
beauty. These are yet more relieved by tints that flush the 
cold face of stone with life, and this vitality puts on its 
highest expression in the scenes, sacred and divine, into 
which the walls change under the touch of the great masters, 
as the shapely face of death becomes radiant with life and 
love under the inspiration of its Creator. 

Thus does God build up the nation and the world. Thus 
does He use every style of character, every quality of spirit 
in His sublime cathedral of man, which He is patiently and 
persistently erecting, in truth and love, out of a redeemed 
and regenerated humanity, on the earth and in the heavens. 

I. What, then, were the traits of soul which this eminent 
agent in the plan divine received from God, and faithfully, 
usefully, and rewardfully developed ? 

1. We should only respond to the sentiment of every 
heart, hostile or friendly, when we place at the foundation 
of his character, honesty. This was his familiar appellation 
in obscurity. It has been none the less so in the greatness 
of his exaltation. Yet it fails to express the whole idea 
which it strives to embody. It is the rude, ungainly trunk, 
which, despite its rough exterior, is both the upholder and 
the nourisher of all the attractions that rejoice above it. It 
branches out in graceful boughs, with their rustling robes 
of green. It turns under the smiles of spring into an orb of 
odorous flower. It hangs in an autumn ripeness of golden 
fruit. 

Honesty in him was not the calculating wisdom of the 
world as shown in its favorite and unworthy employment of 
that word. It was not from selfish policy that he was honest. 
Such honesty is really most dishonorable. It meant in him its 
true and original signification. It was sincerity, simplicity, 
impartiality, honor ; in fine, the scriptural conception of this 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 555 

nature, guilelessness. Look down as deep as you may into his 
profound nature, you will see that it is clear as a moteless 
fountain. It may seem to be shallow, it is so pure ; and yet 
a second sight convinces you that though your eyes are 
sounding deeply, they touch not the bottom. As you look 
skywards on a clear day, you first fancy that you sweep the 
whole depth of the dome with your glance ; a second and 
more penetrating gaze shows you that you have only 
caught its lowest outlines. As it rises hights above bights, 
you exclaim, — 

" The cJiasm of sky above my head 
Is Heaven's profoundest azure, 

an abyss 

In which the everlasting stars abide." 

Thus do you gaze into this pellucid nature. It is as 
simple and open as a child's, yet you cannot penetrate it ; 
not because it interposes barriers to your gaze, but because 
your vision fails. It is none the less clear because it is 
so deep. Could you look farther, you would find the same 
nature, honest, unselfish, child-like ; "an Israelite indeed, in 
whom is no guile." 

The soul of this characteristic is absence of selfishness. 
That is the root of guile. Though not without the tempta- 
tions common to all men, he was remarkably free from this 
propensity. This freedom from self-seeking is the more 
noticeable in contrast with the characters of most great men. 
Milton declares ambition "the last infirmity of noble minds." 
This passion implies a subtle love of self, and frequently 
mars the most exalted natures. Only one President before 
him seemed almost utterly free from it. Jefferson talked in- 
difference, but was a ceaseless schemer and mover of politi- 
cal wires while professedly absorbed in his laboratory, study, 
and farm. Adams, Franklin, Jackson, Clay, were men of 
great parts, but a sense of their necessity to the movements 



556 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OE AMERICA. 

of the nation gave to their strength the weakness of men. 
Their personality was to them an essential element in the 
events of their age. Not so with Washington and Lincoln. 
They were the priests placed over the abyss divine. The 
breath of God bore them onward in the accomplishment of 
His purposes. They were His willing servants, but servants 
only. They were not necessary to His success. Each 
looked forward to the hour when he should repose peaceful- 
ly in the quiet of their homes. Each felt that others had 
greater wisdom than they. Each bent his ear kindly to 
hear what their more creative minds should say. Each sin- 
cerely sought the truth. Other men of might feel that they 
possess the truth. They do not seek it. It comes to them. 
It is an inspiration. They must declare it or die. " Woe 
is me," cry Phillips and Everett, cry Sumner and Beecher, 
" if I speak not that which I feel stirring within me." The 
President had no such call. He waited to hear their words. 
In sincerity of heart he deliberated, decided, acted. 

This trait gave him that slowness of action, which was 
not unlike the stammering of Moses. He must hear the 
voice thrice ere he obeyed it. He must consider, as he can- 
not create ; deliberate, as he does not divine. 

2. But this guilelessness of heart and impartiality of judg- 
ment were joined to great faithfulness in adhering to the 
truths he had espoused. His step was as firm as it was 
careful. Having- done all, he stood. Hampden's motto 
might properly have been his — Nulla vestigia retror sum. 
No step did he ever take backward. Men of ideas often fail 
when those ideas are born into actual life, and the Herods 
rise up for their destruction. They are bold in the closet 
and the forum, but timid in the field. Demosthenes was not 
only the greatest orator of Athens, he was her greatest 
democrat ; none of her men of might equalled him in courage- 
ous defence of her central doctrine. And yet when she 
must sustain her idea at Chaeronea, he fled before the legions 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 557 

of monarchy, and denied in shame the faith for which he had 
so valiantly contended. Cicero was equally courageous in 
words and cowardly in deeds, — a Roman in the forum, but 
not at the front. 

So have been many idealists and reformers. Their shields 
have been thrown away when the enemy assailed them. 
Such are not the most renowned. They have the strength 
of soul both to create and to sustain. Socrates, Huss, 
Luther, Paul could fight as well as speak, — die as heroi- 
cally as they lived. Still this faithfulness is more sure to be 
revealed in those who accept the truth in full view of the 
perils it involves. Who takes the oath of allegiance before 
the enemy's guns will be apt to abide by it in the succeed- 
ing charge. Lincoln believed in these truths from the be- 
ginning. But he did not embrace them as objects of duty 
till he saw the whites of the enemy's eyes, as they were rush- 
ing upon him to his evident destruction. Then seizing them 
as if they were, as they were, loaded cannon, he henceforth 
used them steadily and valiantly in repelling and discomfiting 
his foe. 

This trait was the more necessary in the tremendous 
fluctuation of popular feeling and current events. When 
the waves roared and were troubled, when the mountains 
shook with the swelling thereof, it was well for the nation 
that one held the helm who steered carefully, but calmly and 
steadily; who, if he did not hasten, did not go back ; if he 
did not so soon as we prayed make the desired haven, never 
ran his vessel back upon the breakers we had passed. His 
faithfulness was one of his most admirable and most neces- 
sary traits. 

3. We should be unjust to his character if we shrank 
from noticing his playfulness. In common with many 
superior minds, he was as sportful as a lamb. He liked 
a good story better than a great honor. No one ever more 
enjoyed 



558 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

" Jests and youthful jollity, 
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 
Sport that wrinkled care derides, 
And laughter holding both his sides." 

A merry twinkle ever sat in his eyes. Ever when saddest 
with sorrow, a ray of this sunlight played on their salt 
drops. Napoleon, Luther, Socrates, Cicero, Cassar, Wesley, 
Franklin, Webster, many great men, were of this nature. 
A jest-book attributed to Cicero was current in Rome long 
after his death. Caesar was ever pointing his speech with 
these glittering specialties. Napoleon was full of mirth and 
jokes, even on the night before Waterloo. Their bon-mots 
were as brilliant as their battles. Lincoln, next to Franklin, 
if next, was the most famous jester of America. Each of 
these ever used a witty story to point an argument ; and 
many was the laughable word uttered by the great diplomat 
of the Revolution, that did the people of that sad hour good 
like a medicine. 

This playfulness was not unmanliness. It was the relief 
of an intensely overstrained nature, — the dimples of child- 
hood dancing on the cheek of age, — the reminiscence of the 
past and prophecy of the future, that kept his heart green 
and juicy amid the furnace of fire, heated seven times hotter 
than ever before, where he was called of God to walk. It 
was an important element in his career. Without it, neither 
he nor the people could have walked erect. Those mirthful, 
melancholic stories creeping out on the top of great dis- 
asters, like light playing upon graves, relieved the people 
in their terrific gloom. Not that he did not weep. No 
President ever wept so much. Not that he did not soberly 
gird himself to his fearful responsibilities. None ever 
wrought so patiently and persistenly. But by a pleasantry 
he lightened his and our bursting hearts, that would other- 
wise have sunk like lead in the mighty waters. 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 559 

4. His integrity was remarkable. In fact, all the traits 
we have mentioned, save perhaps the last, may be summed 
up in the one word — Integrity. Here is his honesty, 
his simplicity, his impartiality, his steadfastness. He was 
an integer — a unit. His soul was one. There was no 
disunion there — no conflict there. Its surface might be 
tossed, not its depths. He had doubts as to what policy to 
pursue, and often changed it with the changing moment ; 
but never did he doubt his country, his cause, himself. It 
was the spinal column, that supported not him alone but the 
whole land. To it, as to a mighty tower, the people fled, 
and felt that they were safe. Thousands of millions passed 
through his hand ; no itching palm caught the most soiled 
fragment of the tiniest currency. He assumed the errors, 
even the asserted peculations of his subordinates, as his own. 
The country smiled, but laid not the assumed sin to his 
charge. Its faith in his rectitude was unbounded. The 
most envenomed shafts were never aimed at that mark. 
Here, at least, his bitterest foes confessed that he was in- 
vulnerable. 

5. But even this was not the seat of his strength. That 
lay in his love. His gentleness made him great. Sincere, 
honorable, faithful, true, he might have been, and yet not 
beloved. Franklin was as mirthful, Washington as incor- 
ruptible, Adams as just, yet for none of them did the peo- 
ple shed such floods of tears. Children and graybeards, man 
and woman, slave and freeman, beggar and prince, all poured 
forth their tributary tides of woe. " Behold, how they loved 
him ! " will all Europe say, as they hear this exceeding 
bitter wailing. It was because he loved them. The condi- 
tion of the highest love is essential here. We loved him 
because he first loved us. He was the first President of the 
United States who seemed to carry in his warmest heart the 
heart of all the people. The pertinacious, cold-blooded leech 
of an office-seeker did not feel that he was answered in the 



560 THE TJNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

selfish spirit which inspired his zeal. There was a fatherly 
affection even in the refusal. The bitter secessionist, even 
the relentless rebel, found only gentleness and love in his 
eye, and voice, and grasp. They were constrained to feel 
that they had become prodigals from, nay enemies to, a most 
tender and still affectionate father. 

If these selfish or hostile men found such a welcome, how 
much more did the loyal. The degraded slave felt the warm 
clasp of that paternal hand as a benediction. The most 
garrulous griefs were poured into a sympathetic ear. His 
patient heart allowed every head to lie upon its broad, soft 
pillow. The people felt the throbbings of that heart warm- 
ly beating for them, and, like a tired child on its mother's 
bosom, sank trustfully to rest. 

Far more than his sagacious judgment, incorruptible in- 
tegrity, and playful humor, did his deep affection for the na- 
tion support and carry us through the darkest night of our 
history. It is not his mother's knowledge of what is best, 
for him, not her lightsome nature, not her unceasing faith- 
fulness, that makes the sick child commit himself so con- 
fidently to her arms. It is her love that makes him trust- 
ful. Her judgment may err, strength may yield, joy may 
flee, but love never faileth. Many waters cannot quench it 
nor floods drown it. His greatest weakness only increases 
its strength. His dying* makes it live forever. 

So has the nation rested in his loving arms. She knew 
that his judgment was often at fault, however carefully he 
exercised it ; that sometimes even his strength of purpose 
almost trembled under the fearful pressure to which it was 
subjected ; that his pleasant smile became sadness, and the 
sunny wrinkles were channels for many tears. He had never 
spoken confidently of success. The mighty struggle he 
feared might result disastrously ; the sick nation might die ; 
but dying or living, she felt that he loved her. That quality 
of his soul was undiminished. Nay, it was the soul's self, 
and grew the stronger when all else grew weaker. 



THE DEATH OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 561 

Never did a great people so universally recognize and re- 
pay such love in its ruler. Never did a ruler so love his 
people. Cromwell loved religion first ; Wellington, duty ; 
England was the second in their heart ; her people, last. 
Napoleon loved himself, not France ; Cgesar, power, not 
Rome ; Washington, the country more than its people. All 
the great leaders of the Revolution, all the great living lead- 
ers, reformatory, civil, and military, are devoted to the idea 
that controls them : this to liberty, that to union ; this, 
America's glory, that, her destiny ; this, philanthropy, that, 
piety ; this, justice, that, honor ; this, empire, that, pros- 
perity. Not one of them can in a peculiar, profound, and 
personal sense be said to love the American people. That 
grace they want. Not that they do not love the nation ; far 
from it. All have, all do ; but it is a general, not a special 
regard ; an affection that reveals itself in other forms than 
mere love. Not so with our great President. He held 
every one in his heart of hearts ; he felt a deep and individual 
regard for each and all ; he wept over the nation's dead boys 
at Gettysburg as heartily as over his own dead boy at Wash- 
ington, Their death, more than his own child's, was the 
means of bringing him into . an experimental acquaintance 
with Christ. That sorrow wrought in him a godly sorrow, 
which has become a joy forever. 

Here then may we properly conclude his portraiture. It 
arises, like that of Him in whose image he and all .of us are 
made, into the hights of love. Without profanity we may 
say Abraham Lincoln is love. By that nature will the 
future hail him. A John among the disciples, he, of all our 
public men, the most truly possessed and expressed the 
nature of his Lord and Master. Without revenge, without 
malice, without hardness or bitterness V)f heart, he held 
loyal and disloyal, slave and master, black and white, rebel 
soldier and rebel leader, in his equal love. Had his dying 
lips been allowed to utter one sentence, we think it would 
have been the dying words of Christ ; and for his assassin he 
36 



562 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

would have prayed, " Father, forgive him, for he knows not 
what he does." 

It is for this trait that such mourning bows the land ; for 
this are the streets of his funereal journey lined thick with 
weeds of sorrow, thicker with mourning multitudes ; for 
this do the subdued eyes of millions of strong, cool men, 

"Albeit unused to the melting mood, 
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
Their medicinal gum." 

It is for this, preeminently, that the despised race, free or 
slave, pour forth their most piteous lamentations. Their 
tears of joy but yesterday are almost tears of blood to-day. 
He was the first President that took one of them kindly by 
the hand ; the first that acknowledged their equal right with 
every other citizen to his official recognition. He was not 
merely their military liberator, breaking their bonds only 
because he could thus deliver himself from his enemies ; but 
he was their friend and their father, carrying them in the 
same paternal arms in which he bore the rest of his children. 
Well may they cry out, as they see him thus suddenly leap 
into a chariot of fire and ascend to his reward, "My father! 
my father ! " . Well may they bewail because of him ! 

For this do ten thousand steeples knell their pathetic 

minor, while all listening hearts, as never before, beat 

responsive, — 

"Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the throbbing of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 
To the sobbing of the bells ; 
Keeping time, time, time 
To the rolling of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells, 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells." 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 563 

Thus stands forth the character of this great man : of un- 
blanched and unbending soul ; without selfishness, yet full 
of feeling ; without pride, yet ever regardful of the dignities 
of his position ; without ambition, yet ascending to the top- 
most hights of sovereignty, and absorbing into himself more 
than dictatorial, far more than imperial and kingly powers ; 
without the least malice, yet waging the bloodiest of wars ; 
without boastful bitterness, yet making myriads of his 
enemies lick the dust ; whose most loving heart ever ir- 
rigated, yet never drowned his wise brain, making that, 
which is often in others a verdureless summit, in him a well- 
watered garden full of choicest life. 

" A laborer with moral virtues girt, 
With spiritual graces, like a glory, crowned." 

Such was the nature of him to whom the heart of the 
people has gone out as never before to any ruler. They 
revered Washington, they respected Adams, they believed 
Jefferson, they admired Jackson, they loved Lincoln. God's 
gentleness had made him great. 

II. How this character revealed itself in his career, there 
is no need that I should relate unto you. The details of 
that life will be the theme for many a historian. Irvings 
will yet arise who will devote their graceful pen to the 
portraiture of this second Washington. Carlyles will make 
the splendor of their genius glow around the head of this 
greater than Frederick, or Cromwell. Napoleons will make 
him a more faithful study and model than Csesar. With 
every luxury of art and wealth shall the grand career of the 
cabin-boy of Kentucky, the Uniter and Liberator of America, 
stand in the libraries of kings and statesmen, in humbler 
shape and larger love, on the shelves of all their people 
whose future that life both illustrated and assured. 

1. Two dangers threatened the land when he assumed the 
reins of government — disunion and slavery. The Scylla 



564 HE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

and Charybdis were on either side of the tossed and leaky 
vessel when he took the helm. Fierce broke the waves on the 
rocky Scylla of disunioD ; more fiercely did the Charybdian 
sands of slavery threaten to suck the ship in their shifting 
and ceaseless maelstrom. Both, in influence, invaded the 
whole land. A great party in the North supported disunion 
under the specious phrases of State sovereignty and no co- 
ercion ; while all the land alike hated the slave and his 
kindred, and refused to touch, in the least, the iniquity or 
its victims. The President shared the feelings of the last, 
if not the sentiments of the first. His predecessor yet oc- 
cupying the seat of government, if government it might be 
called which had ceased to govern, was calling on the peo- 
ple to fast and pray, that the wayward sisters might return. 
Great men carried monstrous petitions wrapped in the 
powerless American flag and laid them before Congress, 
entreating that body to consent to the nationalizing of 
slavery by giving it the best half of our territory and all our 
Constitution. The most widely circulated paper in the 
land declared for the Montgomery constitution, and had its 
rebel rag all ready to fling to the breeze when Fort Sumter 
should be attacked, the nation utterly cowed, the govern- 
ment overthrown, and Jefferson Davis made President of the 
twenty-seven Confederate States of America — New Eng- 
land alone being excluded from the general league. She 
might be permitted, if she chose, to retain the belittled title 
of the United States, with its plucked eagle and lowered flag-, 
— the Switzerland of America, — safe only in the contempt 
of her tyrannous neighbors, wide ruling the continent. 

Beneath all this turbulence was the crowded dungeon of 
slavery. Its imprisoned millions toiled and suffered, sighed 
and prayed, saw visions and dreamed dreams such as 
the despised Galileans saw in Jerusalem when prelate and 
Pilate, ignorant and scornful, were seeking, by reconciliation 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 565 

and compromises, the union of the God of the Hebrews with 
the idols of Rome. What cared we for these ? " Touch 
slavery where it is ? " " Never ! " " Free the slaves ? " 
"Hang him who dreams that dream." "Up with John 
Brown and his crazy gang, who fancied himself the Moses 
of this abominable Israel." How that first martyr but now 
welcomed the last to the rest and reward of the faithful ! 
Brothers in this service, they shall be brothers in heavenly 
fruition and eternal renown. " Abolish slavery instantly 
and forever?" "Impossible. The slaves will cut their 
masters' throats; will invade the North, and expel our labor- 
ing population ; will become the vagabonds of the con- 
tinent." 

Thus warred the elements. 

"Who shall calm the angry storm? 
Who the mighty task perform, 
And hid the raging tumult cease ? " 

We pay no unwarranted eulogy to President Lincoln 
when we declare that the peculiar qualities of his nature 
adapted him to this especial work. We well understand 
that God was beneath and above all this chaos, breaking the 
grievous yoke of His children, and moving this unwilling 
nation into higher spheres of life and duty. But He works 
ever through instruments, and as we properly study the 
relation of the human nature of Moses, of David, of Paul, to 
the work He laid upon them, so may we that of our leader 
to what he was set to do. 

(1.) We see how admirably that nature was fitted for its 
first and most important work — the uniting of the North. 
Whatever other duties should arise ere the gigantic task was 
completed, the first duty evidently was to make the loyal 
States one. They were weakened by the severing of South- 
ern ties. The whole structure rocked to its base. North- 
western, Pacific, Central, and North-eastern confederacies 



566 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

were projected. Even cities threatened to assume their 
independence. The Mayor of New York publicly declared 
that no troops should pass through her streets, no cannon 
leave her wharves for the coercion of the rebellious States. 
Unless we could be united the whole was lost. There was 
otherwise no means of staying the movement of disunion ; 
no fulcrum upon which to plant the lever of emancipation ; 
while to secure the Union was to destroy slavery, as every 
rebel knew. Therefore this must be done. 

His conciliatory character, joined with his perfect sim- 
plicity and integrity, was the centre around which the 
Union sentiment rallied. The people felt that they could 
trust him with their liberties, for he would not abuse the 
trust. The hostile party found it hard to complain of so 
paternal a despot. They might rave at his acts but not at 
him. They saw that the salvation of the country was his 
first and last concern ; that he had no private, no party ends 
to serve, but only those of God, his country's, and truth's. 
He addressed them kindly and g-enerousry, as in his letter to 
the Democrats of New York, — being, we presume, the first 
great ruler in this or any land who wrote letters to his peo- 
ple as frankly as to his family. He thus brought many of 
their leaders to his side, so that in his army and in his 
cabinet, as well as in less prominent but hardly less impor- 
tant fields, many of these earnest foes of his party became 
his warmest supporters. General Butler and General Dix, 
Senator Dickinson and Edward Everett, Secretary Stanton 
and Senator Douglas, with thousands of others, gave him 
their earnest and cordial support. 

His conciliatory nature is strikingly seen in the composi- 
tion of his first cabinet. It contained all of his rivals for 
the nomination, with one exception, that of General Banks, 
and he would undoubtedly have had the bureau for New 
England, had he not taken up his residence in the West. 
Such a combination of independent and leading minds, rivals 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 567 

of each other and their head, has never been seen in this 
land since the first cabinet of Washington, which embraced 
in it three rivals of each other, if not of him, — three favor- 
ites of the nation for his chair ; two of whom sat in it, and 
the Constitution was modified solely that the third could 
also, — an event which might have happened but for his 
assassination by Aaron Burr. 

This course had the desired effect. The country rallied 
round so gentle a leader, and the union of the yet undis- 
membered fragments was secured. The feeling of the land 
found expression in its chief, and the various orders and 
mighty number of traitors yet with us were compelled by 
popular sentiment, and sometimes by popular violence, to 
conform to the general will. 

(2.) Then came the second step, — the conciliation of the 
border. Each side essayed this work. Their sympathies 
and their sins inclined them to the rebels, their instincts 
and obligations to the nation. The presence of our army 
constrained its eastern edge to our side ; the influence of 
ideas, its western. The line swayed low in the center, 
and Kentucky became the battle-ground of this sentiment. 
Slowly and surely the truth prevailed there. Against their 
prejudices, their education, their habits, their institutions, 
they ranged themselves under the flag. 

The openly rebellious region must be reduced only with 
arms. How these fluctuated, and how they triumphed only 
when fortified with the other and greater idea of the war, 
history will faithfully show. Here his nature had no chance 
to exert its influence. Generalship, not statesmanship, was 
what that work demanded. It was, however, beginning to 
do so when his career closed. He had other material than 
a discontented North or a divided border to operate upon, 
and might have failed as completely there as he had suc- 
ceeded wonderfully before. Through his armies there, 
through himself here, he had closed up the hideous rent 



568 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

secession had made, and beheld North and South, East and 
West, again and forever, one. He was the uniter of 
America. 

2. But a still greater danger, duty, and glory were before 
him. We were an enslaved as well as a sundered people. 
The sighing of the captive had upheaved the nation from 
its foundations. The closing quotation of Mr. Sumner's 
first speech against our national sin was being awfully ful- 
filled: "Beware of the groans of the wounded souls; oppress 
not to the utmost a single heart ; for a solitary sigh has 
power to overset a whole world." We disregarded those 
sighs, not solitary, but multitudinous and perpetual as the 
heavings of the sea, and we were fast reeling to our down- 
fall. To be set aright, this dungeon must be opened. Its 
millions of innocent captives must go free This people 
must be our people, their God our God. How terrible this 
task ! It is ever easier to conquer our judgment than our 
prejudice. We surrender our reason sooner than our heart. 
The nation hated, despised, detested, the black man. It 
preferred slavery, with all its horrors, to immediate and 
unconditional emancipation. So did Mr. Lincoln. But God 
is greater than man, and to our martyred leader's eternal 
honor shall it ever be said, God found him willing in the 
day of His power. How slowly these steps were taken, 
how reluctantly, how unbelievingly even, we all know. Yet 
taken they were. Like Jacob, having so many feeble ones 
to carry, he must needs travel slowly ; yet he moved for- 
ward. Every day found him further than before. 

Conciliation was his favorite feeling and policy. But that 
cannot be adjusted to this most embittering duty. It must 
stand aside for a season, and deeper traits must be brought 
into service. His sense of right, the backbone of his nature, 
which alone made him strong in the fearful strife, saw that 
there was no other path than this. His training and his 
feelings shrank from the negro : his desire to shun distract- 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 569 

ing elements made him shrink from him yet the more ; 
but duty said, " Go forward ! Pronounce the decree of 
emancipation ! Let my people go ! Take them by your 
official hand, and recognize them as yours ! " And he 
obe3 r ed. 

There was another great conciliator by his side, the head 
of his armies, the worshiped of the land. Tie heard the 
like voice, but refused to listen. Reconciliation and eman- 
cipation he declared were impossible. He had the ear and 
the heart of the President. He warned, he threatened, he 
besought. Kentucky begged him to desist. He would 
mar all her prospects of Union if he pursued that course. 
The influential half of Missouri petitioned. Many wise 
friends from the North entreated. He hesitated till dis- 
aster overwhelmed the chief adviser of this delay, till the 
volunteer inspiration had gone out in blood, and the sug- 
gestion of a draft was met with scowls and threats of defi- 
ance from every quarter. The ship was lying on her beam- 
ends. All God's waves and billows were going over her. 
The rocks of anarchy were thrusting their sharp fangs into 
her. Only the throwing overboard of this demon can save 
her. He clung to the idol yet a little, and made one more 
prayer to its worshipers to come into the ship and save 
their god. They heard and jeered. They had a better 
craft, built for the sole worship of their deity. They en- 
tered no amalgamating vessel of freedom and slavery. He 
kept his word. Slavery was tumbled into the bottomless 
gulf. The waves roared and hissed the fiercer. Secession 
broke its bands among us, and raged in the streets of Nor- 
thern cities. But all in vain. The Ship of State began to 
right itself. The voice of Christ calmed the sea. The 
rocks of disunion were submerged, and the quicksands of 
slavery disappeared forever from the view. The slave be- 
came a man, a warrior, — will soon be a citizen, and, merged 
in the currents of society, be lost in the indistinguishable 



570 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

throng that, from all nations and lands, rejoice in the com- 
mon blood and name of American. 

Thus will he stand forth in all coming time. To him was 
decreed the greatest honor history has conferred on man. 
His sole peer is the father of our country ; and he is not his 
superior. Alike in many traits of character, alike in many 
points of career, they will share together the reverent grati- 
tude of succeeding generations. Their statues will rise in 
every city, before every eye. The one delivered the nation 
from the yoke of vassalage to a once paternal, but then 
tyrannical power ; the other released her from the deadlier 
grasp of a once fraternal, but then far more tyrannical domin- 
ion. The one organized her embryotic communities into States 
and a Nation. The other reorganized these belligerent re- 
publics into a solid and perpetual Union. The one liberated' 
three millions of his own hue from foreign despotism ; the 
other liberated four millions of another color than his own, 
from a despotism infinitely more horrible. The influence 
of both shall go forth for the redemption and regenera- 
tion of all lands. The whole world shall sit rejoicingly 
at the feet of Washington and Lincoln. Happy, proud 
America ! that from her soil sprang, over her soil reigned, 
in her soil sleep the creator and the redeemer, under God, 
of her land and of the world. 

We will not dwell upon the defects in this character ; for 
the service it was set to do, it was fully competent ; from 
other seiwice God has mercifully relieved it. As his proto- 
type failed to see and to carry out the full workings of the 
principle he inaugurated, — as another Virginian was to be 
the perfecter of the doctrine of democracy which God in- 
tended should here have complete expression, and the great 
leader was removed so that his influence might not embarrass 
this movement of Providence, — even so may this second 
Washington have been summoned to his reward, in order 
that the perfection of that democracy may the more speedily 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 571 

hasten forward. It could not, perhaps, have been done be- 
fore. The country had been so reduced by previous theories 
of State rights, and of long submission to an oligarchy of 
human flesh, that it could not instantly know, much less 
discharge its whole duty. The web of the new era might 
have been rent, had it been then subjected to severer strain. 
But this crime has made its lace iron, — the Northern iron 
and the steel, — and we shall henceforth be strong enough, 
we hope just enough, to confer equal citizenship upon all 
the nation. We must not only nor chiefly punish the re- 
bellious leaders. This may be our primary, though not our 
principal duty. The loyal freedman must have his full rights 
as a man. For this is the new President raised up ; not, as 
most sa}^, to be the juster judge, but to be the truer demo- 
crat. The last involves the first. The conditions of the 
rebel and his former slave, excepting slavery, may be re- 
versed. No citizenship for the rebel leader ; perfect citizen- 
ship for his slave. No land for the chiefs of the rebellion, 
homesteads for his loyal bondmen. Expatriation, which 
was urged upon the negro, not three years ago, may be en- 
forced upon his master. The African had no rights these 
would respect. These may have none the nation will respect. 
Outlawed, homeless, exiled, — these once mighty rulers of 
the land may thus expiate their crime of treason, while their 
victims take their homes and their crowns. The first shall 
be last, and the last first. 

Whatever be the fate of the rebel, the enfranchisement of 
the negro alone can renew that land. We have found that 
our salvation could not be effected without the aid of their 
bullet. We shall yet find that it cannot be preserved with- 
out the aid of their ballot. It is impossible to hang, banish, 
or disfranchise the half a million former aristocrats of the 
South. Neither confiscation of their lands nor emancipation 
of their slaves can annihilate their power. They cannot 
thus be prevented from vaulting into authority again. The 



572 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

white serfs who have so faithfully fought their battles will 
assuredly honor their military commanders with civic power. 
What can make and keep them powerless? Negro suffrage. 
Nothing less is needed. Set the four millions of the freed- 
men over against the six millions of white peasantry, and 
let them grapple. We shall soon see who are the real men 
of that region. These loyal masses will see to it that the 
disloyal tyrants do not trouble the nation further. They 
will be the owners of the soil, and the masters of their mas- 
ters. They shall rule over their oppressors, and preserve 
thus the liberty, the unity, the peace of America. 

To this consistent and complete democracy the new Jef- 
ferson is summoned. If true to his principles, and trium- 
phant over the base prejudices of birth and breeding, he 
will shine by the side of his forerunner, equal in service, 
gratitude, and fame. We trust that he will be thus faithful, 
and that we shall grow as steadily after the divine pattern 
in the healthful sunshine of a hastening peace, as in the fear- 
ful midnight of the most bloody of wars. 

Let us not be blinded from higher duties by our just ven- 
geance against the assassin. His sin will quickly find him 
out. That sin no death can adequately punish. Yet Booth 
is but a babe in iniquity compared with Lee. The assassin 
never reigns in history by the side of the rebellious chief. 
He has secured a horrible notoriety. With Clytemnestra 
the assassinator of Agamemnon, king of men ; with Ravaillac, 
who slew the best king- that France ever knew, he shall 
hang forever on the gibbet of infamy. 

Yet he is but the dagger's point ; Lee is its polished 
handle ; Slavery the force that drove it home. Shall we 
wreak our vengeance on the bullet, and let him that fired 
it go free ? The miserable felon assassinated our leader. 
The yet. unharmed general attempted to assassinate the na- 
tion. We have been wrestling in his murderous clutch for 
four years, and received innumerable stabs in our attempts 



THE DEATH OE ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 573 

to prevent our destruction. Is the nation less than one of 
its citizens ? Shall we fawn upon her would-be murderer, 
and tear his, in our rage, into a thousand atoms ? Nay, he 
too is a murderer. Not alone of the hundreds of thousands 
whom he has slain in battle, but of the multitudes that he 
has starved to death in his prisons. He has ridden daily 
under the walls of these charnel-houses, where they were 
perishing for a crust of bread, and never relented for an in- 
stant at the piteous moanings that almost made the walls 
to groan. When the bony arm of one of our boys is thrust 
between the bars, he not daring to put his face there, know- 
ing that the sentinel's bullet would strike him dead, and a 
poor slave-woman thrusts a bit of bread into his hand, that 
sentinel's ballet instantly spatters her brains upon the side- 
walk. And that guard was a soldier of Robert E. Lee, a 
traitor colonel of the army of the United States, who, de- 
spite his barbarities to our men in the field, our captured 
soldiers, and these lowly creatures, whom we are, by the 
command of God, especially required to protect, dwells 
among us unharmed, almost in honor. What was the mis- 
erable actor's crime to his ? We should do solemn justice 
to the greatest traitors in our hand, as we shall to him if 
Providence shall place him in our power. 

But whether we are firm or feeble, God will make both to 
praise Him. How marvellous are His ways ! Out of un- 
speakable crimes He has revealed His glory. Out of the 
violence of the slave-master has come liberty to all he held 
in bondage ; out of the attempted murderers of the nation, 
a more perfect nationality ; out of the successful murder of 
its head, a more thorough and speedy regeneration. Thus 
has it been most strangely verified before all nations, in the 
experience of these transgressors, that 

" Power to the Oppressors of the world is given, 
A might of which they dream not. 0, the curse, 
To be the awakener of divinest thoughts, 



574 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

Father and Founder of exalted deeds, 

And to whole nations, bound in servile straits, 

The liberal Donor of capacities 

More than heroic ! This to be, nor yet 

Have sense of one connatural wish, nor yet 

Deserve the least return of human thanks ; 

Winning no recompense but deadly hate 

With pity mixed, astonishment with scorn." 

Such is the fate of Davis, Lee, and Booth. They have 
the painful consciousness of having been the unwilling in- 
struments of the very ends they strove to frustrate. They 
have united, liberated, fraternized America, and yet are and 
ever shall be linked with Pharaoh and Judas, Caiaphas and 
Pilate, the execrated of men. 

Thus have all things worked together for our good, so far 
as we have loved God. From the beginning has He held 
us in His hand. He has ever prevented our sins from de- 
stroying us. Good and evil were in our earliest history, as 
in our latest. Raleigh and the slave-trade gave their con- 
trary impress to Virginia ; the Pilgrims and persecution to 
Massachusetts ; Huguenots and slavery to South Carolina ; 
the Dutch greed of gain and love of liberty to New York. 
The wheat and the tares have grown together until now. 
Yet always has He been guarding the wheat from utter 
spoliation. He has eliminated the evil, and educed the 
good. He has made our sins and our sufferings go hand in 
hand, our penitence and our progress. He has changed New 
England intolerance into firmness for the right, New York 
covetousness into rivers of beneficence. He will change 
the Virginia slave-trade into righteous traffic, and South 
Carolina slavery into the grandest liberty of this continent. 
The conscientious contraries shall also become a harmonious 
whole. The Huguenot of Carolina and the Puritan of New 
England, the Roman Catholic of Maryland and Episcopalian 
of Virginia, the Quaker of Pennsylvania and Dutch Protest- 
ant of New York, the Baptist of Rhode Island and Methodist, 



THE DEATH OF ABE AH AM LINCOLN. 575' 

of the prairies, shall yet form, not the broad, but the true 
Church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, on whose divine 
foundation the nation shall stand in perpetual unity, holiness, 
and love. Thus may we learn to more perfectly confide in 
His guidance and grace who has so wonderfully revealed 
His constant presence in our planting and our growth, and 
who has shown here, as elsewhere in His kingdom, 

" That many things, having full reference 
To one consent, may work contrariously ; 
As many arrows, loosed several ways, 
Come to one mark ; as many ways meet in one town, 
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea, 
As many lines close in the dial's center, 
So may a thousand actions, once afoot, 
End in one purpose." 

Let us, then, show our grief for our loss by greater faith- 
fulness to the cause for which he died. The grandeur of 
this cause, in its past, present, and future, was remarkably 
revealed in his most memorable word and most memorable 
deed, with which his career was properly crowned. The 
last inaugural is that word, — the entry into Richmond, the 
deed. That word is the most truthful, humble, and Chris- 
tian, that a ruler ever addressed to his people. It contains 
the clearest recognition of the divine will, the humblest 
prostration before His offended goodness, the amplest con- 
fession of the righteousness of His punishments, the largest 
beneficence to his own most deadly foes. 

How sadly it prophesies his own fate ! His, too, must be 
of the blood which God requires from the sword to repay 
that drawn by the lash, for two hundred years, from the 
shrinking flesh of His innocent children. 

His dying speech from the national throne will be read 
with wet eyes by our children's children. If the farewell 
address of Washington will ever be cherished by the nation, 
much more will this more profound and pathetic confession 



'576 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OE AMERICA. 

of our sins, more resolute expression of our duty and pur- 
pose to eradicate them, be admiringly read bj remotest 
generations. It lacks no element of perfection. So short 
that he that runs may read it ; so simple that the most child- 
ish can understand it ; so statesmanlike in its principles that 
the rulers of the world can profitably study it ; so religious 
that the most pious can find in it the holiest nutriment ; so 
philanthropic that largest souls can grow larger in its air ; 
so, clement that the hardest heart cannot but melt in its 
perusal, — it is the consummate flower of executive orations. 
Jeremiah could not wish it more penitential, Ezekiel more 
resolute, John more affectionate.* 

It was a worthy requiem. He sung his swan song, sad, 
sacred, solemn, sweet. The voice of the ages, from David 
to Christ, went wailing through the strain. It will yet be, 
as it should be, the most popular and powerful word of 
America. 

But if the last inaugural was his litany, the advent into 
Richmond was his jubilate. No picture of the war will be 
so frequently painted. It was in extraordinary agreement 
with his whole life and character, in extraordinary disagree- 
ment with that of every other eminent ruler. Here was a 
more than emperor, who for four years had waged severest 
war with a portion of his own people, that had made this 
their capital. Under many generals had he essayed its cap- 
ture. Blood had flowed around it like water. Still had it 

* The "London Spectator " truly says of him and it, " He has per- 
severed through all obstacles, without ever giving way to anger, or de- 
spondency, or exultation, or popular annoyance, or sectarian fanaticism, 
or caste prejudice, visibly growing in force of character, in self-posses- 
sion, and in magnanimity, till in his last short message of the Eourth of 
March we can detect no longer the rude and illiterate mold of a village 
lawyer's thought, but find it replaced by a grasp of principle, a dignity 
of manner, and a solemnity of purpose, which would have been un- 
worthy neither of Hampden nor of Cromwell, while his gentleness and 
generosity of feeling toward his foes are almost greater than we should 
expect of either of them." 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 577 

proudly resisted the whole strength of his armies. At length, 
after bloodiest encounters and almost a year of siege, it had 
fallen into his hands. How should he take possession of 
his prize ? How have all conquerors exulted over such a 
conquest ? When Charles the Bold captured Liege, he com- 
pelled its citizens to batter down a new entrance in their 
walls, through which he marched in triumphant pomp and 
scorn. When Louis the Great's, and David's generals reduced 
a rebellious city, they sent for their royal masters to take 
stately possession. Our grand monarch is near by when 
his great general, as great as their greatest, has won for 
him the long-coveted prize, and all the country is aflame 
with joy. Does he enter it in royal state ? He sends a 
grand deputation to take formal possession of rescued Sum- 
ter. He himself walks up the streets of the capital of the 
rebellion attended by twelve marines and half a dozen officers 
and friends, without music or banners, or military or civic 
pomp. Thousand of unshackled slaves dance around him 
in an uncontrollable ecstas}'' of delight. They look upon the 
face of their deliverer. To them it shines like that of Moses 
as he descended from the mount. Like the lame man un- 
chained of his life-long fetters of infirmity, they precede and 
follow this to them chief of Christ's apostles, walking and 
leaping and praising God. They too have been unchained 
of life-long fetters, that have made them sit at the Beautiful 
gate of the temple of knowledge and liberty, powerless to 
move, hopeless of salvation. 

Their sneering master and mistress (such, thank God, no 
longer !) scowl from their windows upon him and the tumul- 
tuous crowd of beggared blacks that throng him, as Saul's 
daughter did upon the rejoicing David, despising him in 
their hearts. They do not mar his calm content nor the 
delight of the noisy escort who guide the ruler both of them- 
selves and of their former masters to the residence of the 
fled usurper. He is indifferent to their contempt, and only 
37 



578 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

regards the wonderful salvation of which he has been the 
chosen instrument, but which Jesus of Nazareth has alone 
effected. 

As Christ entered into Jerusalem, the city that above all 
others hated, rejected, and should soon slay Him, attended 
by those, but now lame and blind and deaf and leprous, 
whom He had cured, so did this, His servant, enter the city 
that above all others hated and rejected him, and would soon 
be the real if not intentional cause of his death, attended by 
thousands who had been saved from worse maladies than 
those bodily diseases, out of whom, in a moment, legions of 
devils that had long possessed them had been instantly and 
forever expelled by the same Divine Redeemer, through His 
appointed word. " Behold thy king cometh, meek," is 
most beautifully true here and now. The haughty tyrant is 
gone, the loving father is come. Well may their gjad hearts 
dance for joy. Well may the air ring with their jubilant 
hallelujahs. Well may the paternal President feel the com- 
fort and strength of the hour. The blessings of those that 
were ready to perish came upon him. His work draws near 
its close. The nation is united, the rebel subdued, the slave 
set free. His cup is full. He can well exclaim, "Now, 
Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
eyes have seen Thy salvation, and the glory of Thy people 
Israel." 

How near that departure was ! This was his Palm Sun- 
day. Ten days elapse, his Good Friday comes, and he fol- 
lows his Divine Master, through like bloody hands, to his 
Savior's glorious eternity. 

Thus did our king enter his strong city. Thus did he 
triumph over his Philistia. The story will be wrought in 
song and canvas, over the world and adown the ages, as a 
most beautiful and most rare expression of a Christian tri- 
umph. It will live with the last act of John Brown, — his 
kiss upon the slave-child's cheek, — each the perfect flower- 



THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 579 

ing of his earthly life. With such a word as the inaugural, 
and such a deed as this, we may truly feel that his life was 
rounded to a perfect close. He could properly hear the 
voice of the Master saying, "It is enough; come up higher! 
Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee 
ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord." 

His work is done. Ours is yet unfinished. His place in 
history, and, we trust, in heaven, is sure. Ours is yet to win. 
We shall show our admiration for him more by completing 
his work, than by standing too long gazing steadfastly into 
the heavens whither he has ascended. 

As he constantly moved forward with the advancing hour, 
so must we. To pause where he stopped is to go backward. 
Let us keep step with God in every path of Christian and 
patriotic duty, enlarging the bounds and upbuilding- the 
walls of the kingdom of Christ by our faith, our zeal, our 
love. Then shall we best express our sorrow over him who 
fell so untimely, yet so timely, and become, if not, like him, 
a martyr, at least a witness for and a worker with our God. 
Then shall we be a sharer of his labor and his reward. 
What a reward it is to him whose most peaceful nature was 
compelled to most stormy and repulsive service ! How 
ineffably sweet must be the quiet and repose of the banks 
of the river of life, after this dark and bloody night of earth 
and time ! There he rests from his labors, and his works — 
how many and how mighty ! — do follow him, and shall for- 
ever follow. There he worships the Chief of the martyrs, — 
whose form like his was pierced by the murderous stroke, 
whose soul like his was bowed with sorrows not His own, 
whose life like his was given for the redemption of others 
than Himself. Before that Savior does he, thoughtless of 
self, bow in bliss and gratitude unknown to earthly hearts. 
Through His infinitely greater service and sacrifice has he, 
a poor slave of sin and hell, found everlasting redemption 



580 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 

and equal citizenship with the unfallen angels of God. Let 
us, like him, though with eyes dimmed by tears and time, 
gaze, in faith, on the illustrious Martyr of the universe, our 
Savior, our Redeemer, our God. Let us consecrate our- 
selves, soul, body, and spirit, to that divinest purpose, for 
whose establishment He poured out His soul unto death, 
and to whose completion He has allowed so many of His 
disciples to feebly but gratefully follow Him afar off, in like 
sacrifice of themselves upon the altar of their faith, — as- 
sured that, under His supervision, despite the seeming tri- 
umphs of men and devils, that cause is steadily advancing 
to its earthly and eternal consummation. 






PEACE: HEE GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 



" They are dead that sought the young Child's life." — Mat- 
thew ii. 20. 

" The Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that 
He sware unto their fathers ; and there stood not a man of 
all their enemies before them ; the lord delivered all 
their enemies into their hand. there failed not aught of 
any good thing which the lord had spoken unto the house 
of Israel; all came to pass." — Joshua xxi. 43-45. 




UT one Fourth of July has ever occurred that 
equals the one which has just been celebrated 
with tumult and joy unspeakable. That was the 
ig-^^-e^j9{ first that came after peace was made, and our 
independence was acknowledged by the parent government. 
After eight years of wasting war ; after thousands of their 
youth and men of years had fallen in death ; after their 
prosperity had given way to long and fearful poverty, and 
the national sovereigns, crowns, shillings, and even pennies, 
that had been the stable and general reward of industry and 
basis of wealth, had given place for years to a miserable 



* A sermon preached in Boston, Sunday, July 9, 1865. 

(581) 



582 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

paper, many dollars of which could not buy a British shil- 
ling, and whose fluctuations, even on its almost worthless 
base, paralyzed trade and defrauded labor of .its due ; after 
anarchy and hatred of brother against brother, such as only 
our Southern section has lately reproduced, had raged 
through all the land, as violently in Boston as in South 
Carolina, then came the gray flush of the approaching day. 
Exhausted England rested long and longer between her 
attacks, until at Yorktown, hemmed in by allianced France 
and America, she surrendered her hold and hopes, and ac- 
knowledged our independence. The following Fourth of 
July was a day of widest and wildest delight. 

Such has been the past anniversary. We have heard 
the joy and praise that with bell, and martial march, and 
music, and roar of multitudinous cannon, have shaken the 
skies ; that with the voice of praise, and prayer, and dis- 
course of reason, and passion of oratory, have lifted the 
souls of the people to Him whose right hand and whose 
mighty arm hath gotten Him the victory. We, too, have 
just emerged from a wide and wasting war. Our finances 
have plunged into an abyss, which, but for the unexam- 
pled confidence and strength of the people, would have 
proved as fatal to our wealth as was the continental cur- 
rency to that of our fathers. Our foes have been they 
of our own household. Brother has wrestled with brother 
in dying agonies. Half a million of our sons sleep in 
their own blood. The cloud of sorrow has wrapped mil- 
lions of hearts in the pall of the grave. For four years 
has the terrific struggle gone on, until at last the sulphu- 
rous cloud moves off, and the light of returning day glad- 
dens every eye. 

It is well to come together in the house of God, and lift 
humble and grateful hearts to Him. It is well in the awak- 
ening day, to consider the blessings and the duties with 
which He is now crowning us. Let us then turn our eyes 



THE END OF THE WAR. 583 

inward and heavenward, discerning the will of God and the 
willingness of man. 

I. The first great blessing which peace brings us is 
Peace. She herself is a treasure worthy our warmest love. 
War is ever horrible. Whatever grand disguises it puts 
on, in pomp of dress, array, and melody ; in the excitement 
of the strife, when men put on the action, and put within 
them the heart of the tiger ; in the bloody feast of tele- 
grams and pictures of the battle, on which the public appe- 
tite feeds with a greediness of delight that reveals our kin- 
dred to our cannibal ancestors, and shows that we are one 
with those who. yet find their most exhilarating beverage to 
be the blood of their victims, and his flesh to be their sweet- 
est viand. Notwithstanding all these terrific uplifts of soul 
which it creates, it is still a volcano of death and horror. 
You may admire the armless, legless heroes that feebly move 
through your streets. You would hardly wish to exchange 
your soundness of body for their wounds and weakness. 
You may seek to cheer the weeping father, mother, wife, 
and child with your cheap phrases of duty, patriotism, and 
glory. But you would not exchange your embodied love 
for theirs, disembodied and unapparent. You would not 
empty your house of its head or its heart, in order that you 
might fill your desolate soul with memories of goodness or 
greatness. Human hearts crave visible, embraceable be- 
ings, on which to lavish their love. Heaven to the heart- 
sore is desirable, because it will disclose the evanished 
faces of the loved, and restore to our arms their long-lost 
forms. 

Those who, therefore, prate flippantly of the glories of 
martyrdom for the right, are not those who bleed inwardly 
and constantly in consuming sorrow. You never hear the 
parents, whose son will brighten their aged eyes no more, 
parade this theme in wordy eulogy. You never hear the 
widow, cast into an outer and inner mourning, that only 



584 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

death can cure, by the dreadful disasters of battle, who 

is ever crying out in the darkness of her home and 

heart, — 

" that it were possible, 
After long years of pain, 
To feel the arms of my true love 
Round me once again ! " 

You never hear such wounded souls discoursing on the 
beauties and grandeur of war. That is well enough for 
orators, and editors, and parlor knights, and dames ; it is 
not the speech of these who humbly say, with firm-set lips, 
and tumultuous, agonized heart, " I was dumb, and opened 
not my mouth, because Thou didst it. 77 " Thy will, not 
mine, be done. 77 

Nay, war is a horror of horrors. Thank God it has fin- 
ished its direful course. Thank God that the marches of 
our mighty legions have ceased ; that we no more sup on 
such horrors as were served up to us on the dreadful night 
of Bull Run, and by Ball 7 s Bluff, and Chickamauga, and 
Murfreesboro 7 , and Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness, and 
Spottsylvania, and Fort Pillow, and a hundred other like 
fearful names. These telegrams, dripping, nay, deluged in 
blood, are not served up as our daily food. And those 
more horrible accompaniments of the bloody feast, — Libby 
and Belle Isle, Andersonville and Salisbury, — they too are 
gone, and gone forever. 

Talk not of the glories of war. As well talk of the glow- 
ing pageant of the Judgment, when the great day of 
God 7 s wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand. Some 
may fancy that they will gaze with artistic eye on that 
terrific spectacle. They have so dwelt upon it in earthly 
imagination ; they have set their highest genius to depict 
the scene. Rubens, Cornelius, Fra Angelico, and greatest 
of all, Michael Angelo, have set forth its fearful splendors 



THE END OF THE WAR. 585 

with sublimest pencil. Yet what are they by the side of 
the unspeakable reality? — the blazing earth, the dissolv- 
ing heavens, the arising dead, the assembled multitudes, 
the great white throne, from whose presence earth, and 
heaven flee away, and there is no place found for them ; 
the Judge severe, the wonderful Son of God, the enrap- 
tured saints, the shuddering, flying, falling sinners. Ah, 
why fancy that a Michael Angelo, by covering a narrow 
wall of a little chapel with pigment, can body forth that 
spectacle of spectacles ! 

So dream not that your talk of war, or pictures of war, 
embodies its realities. No tongue, no heart can. Its riven 
frames, its ghastly dead, its unutterable groanings, its shock 
of demons leaping at each other, — all this is over, may it 
be, forever. That blessing peace bestows. 

But peace also gives us the blessing of ordinary law. 
War not only destroys the happiness, it weakens the sta- 
bility of society. We have lived for four years in fear of 
losing our liberties as well as our lives. Those liberties 
have been suspended. The ancient and essential landmarks 
of human progress and protection have been submerged in 
the deluge of blood. Our prime minister not only said 
that he could, by touching .a little bell, consign any one 
to prison : he did it. Had he so chosen, he might have 
consigned them to death also. Hundreds were thus, with- 
out warrant or accusation, cast into jail ; others were ban- 
ished from the land, and all held their liberties at the tenure 
of the government. The Constitution as well as the laws 
was suspended, and military despotism swayed the land. 
The government professed to maintain some of its forms, 
yet it claimed the power to disregard them all, and did 
often disregard most. The President appointed generals, 
who held commissions as members of Congress, contrary 
to its direct letter. He refused to execute laws which 



58Q PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

Congress enacted ; refused to remove those whom it ordered 
to be cashiered ; and though carefully regarding their will, 
when he could consistently with his own duties, he as care- 
fully disregarded it when he decided that such disregard 
was best. This lawlessness and super-Constitutionalism 
have come to an end. The forms of law resume their 
authority. The President becomes again the servant of the 
Constitution. The little bell of his secretary can no more 
be a knell, summoning its hearer to heaven or to hell. It 
has lost its power over the liberty or life of man. The 
courts resume their benign and calm control ; Congress can 
legislate, supreme in its sphere. The people enjoy the 
serene repose of liberty under law. Great, unspeakably 
great, is this gift of peace. 

II. But while peace in itself is thus blessed and bless- 
ing, this peace witnesses, though it did not not confer, yet 
greater blessings than deliverance from war and despotism. 
It ushers in the morning of Liberty. What a contrast does 
this national birthday exhibit in comparison with its late 
predecessors. Five years ago this anniversary was cele- 
brated with quaking hearts. For thirty years the great 
iniquity had grown by the national principles, and policy, 
and power upon which it had fed, until it domineered over 
most, and threatened all the land. The nation rocked under 
the Presidential conflict. Bitterest hate burned in multitu- 
dinous breasts. The Union should perish if the candidate 
of freedom was elected. Many hearts fainted with fear. 
Others, and enough, were courageous despite their fears. 
That Fourth of July was black and lowering. The next 
was far darker. Our men lay in their intrenchments beyond 
the Potomac. Bloody skirmishes in Baltimore, and at Alex- 
andria where Ellsworth had Mien, betokened the coming- 
storm. Washington was surrounded with fortifications ; 
the country was filled with armed men. 



THE END OE THE WAR. 587 

"The steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war." 

Three hundred thousand soldiers were summoned to arms. 
The white villages of Northern invaders dotted many a 
Southern knoll, and the blue-breasted hosts trod defiantly 
their hostile fields. Anxiously, tearfully awaiting the rising 
of the curtain, and the opening of the great tragedy, the 
people gathered to their birthday festival. What solemn 
appeals' marked that hour ! what stern resolves ! what 
earnest declarations of duty ! what searching of ourselves. 
Yea, what indignation ; yea, what fear ; yea, what vehe- 
ment desire ; yea, what zeal ; yea, what revenge. In all 
things we were approving ourselves to be clear in the great 
matter with which God was testing the sincerity of our 
repentance. But the cloud lay along the sky black and 
muttering, and shooting forth occasional shafts of death. 
The storm broke soon in all its fury. Not twenty days 
from that, Bull Run was lost, and panic and seeming national 
dissolution swept the land. 

The next anniversary was more doleful. We had gath- 
ered up courage, plucked a young commander from the 
Western mountains, glorified him with the title of the Young 
Napoleon, put him at the head of two hundred thousand 
men, and sent him down to sweep away the enemy. Mean- 
time a hardly regarded officer had opened the gates into 
Tennessee, and another had fought his way down the Mis- 
sissippi, while a third had seized the harbors of North and 
South Carolina, and still a fourth had taken possession of 
New Orleans. But all eyes were turned from these lesser 
lights of Burnside, and Dupont, and Butler, and Farragut, 
and Foote, and Grant, and gazed intently on the commander 
of the Potomac. That Fourth of July saw him defeated, 



588 PEACE: HER GIETS AND DEMANDS. 

and after untold slaughter, driven from the eaves of the 
rebel Capitol in irretrievable disgrace and ruin. 

Again the nation was on its face, and sorrow and dismay 
tore its soul. That Fourth of July covered a year of blood 
and anguish. What multitudes had bit the dust ! Since 
less than three weeks after the previous anniversary, when 
Bull Run opened the sluiceways of blood, what channels of 
gore had poured over the land ! And all seemingly in vain. 
Their heart was yet unsubdued ; their resources mighty ; 
their territory scarcely entered. 

Another year rolls round : the great word of Liberty had 
been spoken, but the more greatly longed-for word of Peace 
had not been heard. So far from it, those three days pre- 
vious the most terrible battle of the whole war had been 
raging, and multitudes were lying unburied on the field of 
Gettysburg. And though the Mississippi was opened, its 
tidings did not intensify the morning paeans. War still 
raged ; the conflict was yet uncertain. The foreign powers 
looked scorningly on; the breaking waves clashed high over 
the laboring vessel. That Fourth of July was as sad as 
any of its forerunners. The smile was enforced ; the cheer 
hollow ; hope deferred was breaking the heart. Still the 
nation stood firm to its principles. It went steadily onward 
in its career of justice and righteousness. It grew higher 
and higher in the divine stature. 

Our last birthday was in some respects our darkest. Each 
side had put forth all its strength for the final struggle. 
Each felt that it was the last time. If defeated, it did not 
seem possible that we could rally again. We had brought 
to the head the best military talent at our command, and 
had given them every soldier and weapon they could use. 
The two who had risen by steady success to the highest 
positions, were each held at bay by unsubdued armies. One 
had already sacrificed threescore thousand even in his march 
to Richmond, and was powerlessly battering its gates. The 



THE END OF THE WAR. 589 

other was pushing slowly and painfully through the rocky 
ramparts of northern Georgia, far yet, and seemingly hope- 
lessly far, from the walls of Atlanta. No gloomier hour 
has shut down upon us since the war began. The bells 
almost tolled, ring them merrily as they may, so dismal 
were our rejoicings. The whole head was sick, the whole 
heart faint. The resolution of the Lieutenant General hardly 
sustained the public faith. The mercury sank into the 
bulb. Traitors stalked boldly through the land, and held 
open conference with the armed rebels against the govern- 
ment. The Presidential contest was beginning to agitate 
the nation, and liberty and nationality were to be subjected 
to a test such as they never before suffered, much less en- 
dured — that of a popular vote on the very question of the 
national existence, in the hour when almost one half of her 
children were in arms against her. 

Dark, how dark, total eclipse, was that hour ! The sun 
was turned into blackness, and the moon into blood. The 
stars of heaven fell as when a fig-tree shaketh its untimely 
figs. We almost saw the sheeted dead walk gibbering 
through the streets. If we failed in the field and at the 
ballot-box, if we failed in either, all was lost. Liberty went 
out into returnless night. The rights of man disappeared 
from the face of the earth. Free institutions were at an 
end. Cassarism was the law of this, as of all preceding 
ages. Democracy was a vanished bubble, man a slave, 
humanity a delusion, Christianity a lie. 

No one will ever forget that dreadful day. The guns 
were almost minute guns, firing a funereal salute over the 
dead empire of man. The orations were earnest and cour- 
ageous, but plaintive and dreary. Congress issues a most 
penitential confession and cry to fasting and prayer. The 
nation put on sackcloth, and lay upon its face before the 
Lord. 

Thus similar in sadness, solemnity, and anxiety were our 



590 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

last five anniversaries. How different this ! Peace might 
have brought us another kind of a gift. It might have 
come with our armies overthrown, our land rent in twain, 
our liberties gone, defiant and triumphant hosts lining the 
farther bank of the Potomac and the Ohio, feuds raging 
in every Northern State and city, our debt, currency, busi- 
ness, and wealth alike worthless, while Slavery lifted her 
crested head, and hissed her triumphs in the ear of an amazed 
and ruined world. No blessing would such a peace have 
won us, but misery and death. 

Far otherwise has been the gift and goodness of God. 
He bestows upon us a peace that is full of richest rewards ; 
one in which the spirit of rebellion, rampant in the land for 
thirty years, raging like an unloosed menagerie for four 
years, has been disarmed, if not subdued ; in which the 
fiercer demon of Slavery has 'been cast out of the nation at 
once and forever, and four millions of her long-suffering 
children are sitting at her feet, clothed and in their right 
mind ; one in which the nations of the earth that despised 
us, and desired our destruction, are constrained to stand in 
awe of the majesty of our strength and the greater majesty 
of our continence, and behold their systems of restraint 
and misgovernment crumbling like banks of mist before our 
rising sun. 

The salvation of other vital ideas is worthy of espec- 
ial rejoicings. Peace has not only brought liberty, it has 
secured the perpetuity of a free, and equal, and united 
nation. They are dead that sought the young Child's life. 
The best civil expression of the Gospel of Him of Bethle- 
hem was in extremest peril. It was the youngest of politi- 
cal forms, too often spoken of by ourselves as an experi- 
ment ; always thus regarded across the seas. Against this 
central necessity of a truly Christian state, against the 
only possible system of permanent and righteous govern- 



THE EXD OF THE WAR. 591 

ment, arose the mighty rebellion. It not only planted it- 
self on human bondage, it allied itself with thrones. Mr. 
Mason claimed the sympathy of the British aristocracy, be- 
cause the idea and purpose of his government were one 
with their forms and principles. He won it because of this 
unity. The young child of a democratic Union was thus 
fearfully assailed. It has survived its assailants. So far 
as possessing any power of renewing their attack, they are 
dead that sought the young child's life. The Gospel of the 
Son of God can now grow in its civil and national expres- 
sion, unalarmed by the foes of its own household. They 
have become its footstool. They will yet be its faithful 
servants and supporters. All the imperial powers that 
joined in heart and lip in the murderous endeavor, will ac- 
knowledge its triumph, and conform their institutions to its 
ordinances divine. 

Such are some of the gracious favors with which God 
has been pleased to crown this hour and people. It is the 
grand Sabbatic jubilee of the nation. She rests from her 
painful labors. Her work of creation has greatly progressed, 
if it has not attained completion. She can justly rejoice 
in the propitious hour. 

" Grim visaged War has smoothed his wrinkled front." 

The bells have rung merrily their sacred summons to the 
altar of thanksgiving. Again, and as never before, can we 
join in the psalm of peace and praise. 

" Joy to the pleasant land Ave love, 

The land our fathers trod ; 
Joy to the land for which they won 

Freedom to worship God ; 
For peace on all its sunny hills, 

On every mountain "broods, 
And sleeps by all its gushing rills, 

And all its mighty floods. 



592 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

" The wife sits meekly by the hearth, 

Her infant child beside ; 
The father, on his noble boy, 

Looks with a fearless pride. 
The gray old man, beneath the tree, 

Tales of his childhood tells ; 
And sweetly in the hush of morn 

Peal out the Sabbath bells." 

Especially can we add the last verse of these lines, and 
feel that the joy and peace are now truly attained. Then 
the poet was constrained to add. 

" And Ave are free — but is there not 

One blot upon our name? 
Is our proud record written fair 

Upon the scroll of fame ? 
Our banner floateth by the shore, 

Our flag upon the sea ; 
But when the fettered slave is loosed 

We shall be truly free." 

That fetter has fallen, that liberty secured, and calm is 
complete. 

III. But the Sabbath, though a day of rest, is still more 
a day of work. Never do duties press more steadily upon 
us than on these days of God. Never has the Creator been 
more active than since He ceased from six days of creation, 
and entered upon the present Sabbath of earth and time. 
The grosser work is ended of forming sun, and moon, and 
stars, and earth ; of bringing into being trees and plants, 
fish, and bird, and beast ; even the highest of this material 
handiwork, the fashioning of man ; but the spiritualizing of 
that man, his preservation in purity, his growth into fami- 
lies, communities, nations of holy ones, his restoration if 
he falls, and by a long and painful path, which God Him- 
self must build and traverse in sorrow unto death, his at- 



THE END OE THE WAR, 593 

tainment of the beatific state of universal brotherhood, a 
developed, happy, holy world — all this is the work of the 
seventh day, the Sabbath of God and of the world. 

So we have accomplished the grosser work of physical 
subjugation, and are called to enter the spiritual service of 
regeneration. The armies are scattered, the forts possessed, 
the cannon mounted by trusty soldiers, the flag respected 
and obeyed, the whole land freed from open rebellion. This 
work of creation is completed. 

But a greater yet remains. The inward work is yet to 
be done — a work in us no less than in the region this sin 
has so long made a hell, and God's judgments have made 
an Aceldama. 

That work is one in idea, though manifold in form. It is 
this, and this only, and this entirely — to erase from our 
statutes, our tongues, our hearts, every recognition of color 
as a badge of distinction or separation between man and 
man. The outer work of this regeneration is accomplished, 
the inner is yet unachieved; the material, or six days' work, 
is done, the spiritual or Sabbath duty is begun. The outer 
work was to break the chains of the slave, and put a mus- 
ket in his hands, to fight for himself and his country. 
These two acts accomplished, proved him at the least, and 
at the most, but a j:>hysical man. The harness of slavery 
had made him a brute. He was like the ox and the mule 
by whose side he toiled. I have seen one driving his team 
afield, with a vivid sense of the slaveholding feeling that 
they were substantially one. Both had been bought or 
raised on the farm ; both had a market value ; both had 
been or could be sold ; both were as much objects of prop- 
erty as the plough which united them. The purchaser of 
stock put them together in his bill, the assessor in his 
schedule, the sheriff in his sale. The people spoke of so 
many head of slaves as they did of so many head of cattle. 
38 



594 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

Until this yoke was removed no inward regeneration could 
be effected, God might shine in upon him and sanctify him. 
He might warm his heart with the breath of earthly love, 
make him a devoted son, husband, and father, make him an 
humble, joyful Christian ; but man could not recognize these 
inner and spiritual gifts, as they were not marketable com- 
modities. They must not interfere with their marketable 
qualities. Suppose a steam engine should fall in love, and 
awaken in his mate reciprocal emotion ; suppose they should 
feel that they must go and keep together, irrespective of any 
rights of corporations or individuals, what would the busi- 
ness men say at such an intrusion upon their domain ? 
They would declare this thing must be stopped, or all our 
property vanishes. If the internal heat of locomotives takes 
this amorous and self-dependent form, what may happen to 
our stores, and houses, and fields, and cattle, even stocks 
and gold? These coldest of creatures will feel the general 
warmth with which Lucretius tells us all nature reciprocates 
the affection of its Creator. 

Two elephants, the papers said, last winter, hybernating 
together at Pittsburg, fell in love. Their tender attachment 
was the theme of much gossip and amusement on the part 
of probably their more callous keepers. Spring came, and 
their different owners said they must be separated. Grief 
and rage extreme tore the hearts of the noble beasts at the 
enforced decree. Alas, multitudes of men and women, 
tender, deep, and true, whose hearts and lives God had 
made one, have been torn apart by far more cruel hands 
over half our land for hundreds of years. The wants and 
wishes of their proprietors came between the feelings of 
these legal beasts, and husband and wife, mother and babe, 
have been as carelessly parted as dam and foal, or cow and 
calf, a span of horses, or a yoke of oxen. 

I had before me as I was writing this discourse the auc- 



THE END OF THE WAR. 595 

tion bills of Charleston, in which are described the creatures 
to be sold, with their names and ages. I read such names, 
ages, and descriptions as these : " Cicero, 55, driver; Hester, 
20, field-hand, prime, one eye lost by an accident." The ac- 
cident that happened to this young lady and " prime field- 
hand " may be easily imagined. It was probably not un- 
like that accident which happened to Isabella Joyce, that 
terminated her life in awful tragedy. " Maud, 16, field- 
hand, prime. 77 A pretty name, a Maud Muller, only with an 
infinitely worse fate. "Infant, 6 mos." The creature had not 
yet attained to the dignity of a name, save that name which 
makes every parental heart throb in love — a babe upon the 
block, and no mother specified. One among the lot may 
have been its agonized mother, and may not. " March, 35 ; " 
who is described as "a field-hand, and A 1 cook." "Joe, 
18, prime field-hand, two years at carpenter's trade," is 
yoked, we trust lovingly and righteously, with "Julia, 16 
years of age." This young carpenter and his youthful com- 
panion, knocked down to the highest bidder, like a pair of 
horses at auction, give you some faint idea of the horrors of 
that hell of hells. Listen still further: " Flora, seamstress, 
2-4," with "Jemmy, 30, and James and Charles, 5 and 1," 
probably their children, James being the dignified title with 
which she honors her husband in his boy. "Abram, 2 years 
old," and " Binah, 2 mos.," are on the list. "Lucy, a crip- 
ple, 60," " Luc}", a nurse, 58;" another carpenter, also 
named "Joe, aged 25." Perhaps this name was given to these 
artisans because the father of the Lord Jesus Christ was of 
that name and trade. It was an appropriate title and call- 
ing. No doubt their Lord and Master often toiled with 
them at their task. This Joe had a little family, "Amey, 27, 
Louisa, 8, and Joe, Jr., 3." They all brought seven hundred 
and fifty dollars, as a clerkly pencil writes on the paper. 
Kate, a babe of a year, goes into the iron mill ; William, of 



596 PEACE: HER GIETS AND DEMANDS. 

the same age: Molly, standing alone, a maiden of 22 sum- 
mers, brings the handsome figure of thirteen hundred and 
fifty dollars. "May, 9 mos., Aaron, 6 mos., Lizzy, 1 year, 
Emma, 3," pretty names are these ; pretty faces we doubt 
not ; pretty souls, certainly, as they look weeping and ago- 
nized up to the face of their like weeping and agonized Lord. 
More than a hundred such names are on these three bills 
of sale at The Mart, as this haunt of hell was by distinc- 
tion called. HoW they point to the myriads whose fate 
they shared ! 

See you not, my friends, that slavery must be destroyed ere 
the first step in manhood is taken. These sons and daugh- 
ters of the Lord God Almighty must be taken from the list 
of merchantable things and made into men and women. 

Before this, not human feelings alone were disregarded, 
the Divine Spirit was despised. He might renew them in 
holiness. He might say to them, "Ye are no longer your 
own ; ye are bought with a price ; ye are the servants of the 
Lord your Redeemer." But these men step in, Christians pro- 
fessedly, and say, " We hold them still as ours. What care 
we for the Holy Ghost ? He may renew their heart. He 
may make them free men in Christ Jesus, He cannot make 
them free from us. Should a revival of religion break out 
among our mules, would that spoil them for our fields or 
markets." So they mocked the God of heaven, and he has 
rained upon them fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest, 
and this has been the portion of their cup. Beholding such 
dreadful deeds committed by lordly merchants, supported by 
eminent jurists and statesmen, sanctified by consecrated 
divines, carried on for generations, against every pulse of 
humanity, every call of conscience, even entreaty of God, 
how could we expect any other doom ? It is only amazing 
that God has borne with it as long as He has. His long- 
suffering is greater than when '■ He waited in the days of 



THE END OF THE WAR. 597 

Noah while the ark was a preparing." His ark now has 
been long- preparing. The North has been ripening in con- 
science under the preaching of many Noahs until the nation 
was ready to become the ark of shelter for these suffering 
children. Then came the flood. Death has leaped into 
their houses, while their slaves walk out in freedom. Their 
sons perish by myriads, their prophets flee, their pride falls : 
what pride and what a fall ! Their ruin is complete, while 
those that they had stolen, and sold, and scourged, and 
ravished, and treated with unutterable inhumanity, dwell 
harmless amid their conquerors' desolation. Never was 
there such a contrast in the same land at the same time. 
The slave lost nothing for they had naught to lose. The 
hatred and fear of the master prevented his employment of 
them in battle, and so they have escaped the death which 
has invaded every other class in all the land. They were 
valueless as merchandise, and therefore their sale and 
separation ceased. They were eased in toil and free from 
the lash, for they found favor in the eyes of their masters 
when it was seen that the families of those who fought for 
their bondage must be intrusted to their keeping-. 

Thus has light been in captive Goshen, while darkness was 
on Pharaoh's palaces ; thus have no death-wails broken from 
their riven hearts, while in almost every other household has 
there been lamentation and bitter mourning. 

As we see this divine punishment and protection, we can 
but exclaim, Just and true are thy ways, Lord God Almighty. 
Thou hast cast down the mighty from their seats, and ex- 
alted them of low degree. It has come to pass in this day 
that the Lord has given them rest from their sorrow, and 
from their fear, and from their hard bondage ; while those 
who held them captive are themselves captured, and all their 
pomp and power have become a burning and a desolation 
forever. 



598 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

"The blood that they have shed could hide no longer 
In the blood-slaken soil, but cried to Heaven. 
Their cruelties and wrongs against the poor 
Have quickened into swarms of venomous snakes, 
And hissed through all the earth, till o'er the earth, 
That ceases now from hissings and from groans, 
Rises the song, — How are the mighty fallen ! 
And by the peasant's hand. Low lie the proud, 
And smitten with the weapons of the poor, — 
The blacksmith's hammer, and the woodman's ax. 
Their tale is told ; and for that they were rich, 
And robbed the poor ; and for that they were strong, 
And scourged the weak ; and for that they made laws, 
"Which turned the sweat of labor's brow to blood, — 
For these, their sins, the nations cast them out; 
The dunghills are their death-beds, and the stench 
From their uncovered carrion, steaming wide, 
Turns in the nostrils of enfranchised man 
To a sweet savor. These things come to pass 
From small beginnings, because God is just." 

1. These chains broken, the next step is to recognize the 
slave as a man outwardly. This was done by putting the 
rifle in his grasp. True, a soldier is largely a machine, but 
he is a human machine. We use horses for riders, not for 
fighters. The ancients employed elephants, moderns con- 
fine themselves to men. Their valor, obedience, and skill 
have tested this quality of their manhood. 

The outer line is carried. The inner is yet to be won. 
The country has been compelled to recognize the physical 
manhood and brotherhood ; it must now their spiritual. 

In this duty, as in the first, much is to be done here. It 
was almost as great a deed to organize a colored regiment in 
Boston as it was in Richmond. Governor Banks vetoed the 
whole Revised Statutes, a volume of a thousand pages, 
because it struck the word " white v from the militia law. 
Had he been her Governor, Massachusetts had not led the 
column in this onward movement. Governor Andrew faced 



THE END OF THE WAR. 599 

a frowning and a sneering city when he called his neighbors 
to arms. The President did not dare to march them through 
New York. They would have met a worse fate than did 
the Sixth in Baltimore. We hated and despised them as 
much as we did Davis and his myrmidons. We have 
partially, and but partially, overcome that feeling. 

This chain must be dissolved from their necks and from 
ours. On its various links I shall not enlarge. They are 
evident to every man's consciousness. The right of suf- 
frage may be won at the South only at great expense of 
time and toil, and possibly of blood. Were there more 
blacks than whites in this State, and you whites held the 
whole power in your hands, would you admit them to its 
privileges without a struggle ? No party holding such 
power ever yet abandoned it gratuitously. There are more 
blacks than whites in Mississippi and South Carolina, if not 
in the other States. The present Governor of Louisiana 
declares that to give him the ballot gives him the country. 
But yesterday's paper reports him as saying to his white 
hearers, " If after having taken this country from the red 
man, and holding it for more than a century you have be- 
come so charitable as to give it to the black man, I can only 
submit and bow to the will of the people." The people he 
understands to be not the majority of its citizens, but its 
former voters, four fifths of whom were and are rank rebels. 
They must deprive their loyal fellow-citizens of equal rights, 
or the State goes into the hands of the man of color. It is 
something of an advance for him to call him man; something 
to say the people may, if they will, give the State into his 
hands. The white people will not grant this, but God will. 
They may shrink from such a complete overturn in their 
society, but it is inevitable. The South must admit the 
black, not to the supremacy, but to equality. Their blood 
must mingle as freely in the channels of social unity as it 



600 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

has on the fields of carnage. They are at antagonism to- 
day. Some event may arise, will arise, that will force them 
into an indissoluble unity. 

2. This future in the State is none the less the future of 
the Church, and the duty of peace is to insure this future. It 
is all comprised in one text. There is neither Greek nor Jew, 
male nor female, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ 
is all and in all. Its workings everybody feels, but few are 
willing" to acknowledge, fewer are willing to obey. That a 
church can stand permanently on any other foundation is as 
impossible as it is for God to lie. That brethren in Christ are 
to be set apart because of their color from other brethren ; that 
the ministers of Jesus Christ are to be forbidden from serving 
in pulpits, to which their talents summon them, because of 
their complexion ; not even because of this, but because they 
happen to have a small portion of descent from one of God's 
continents and peoples, is a scandal and offence, a stench in 
the nostrils of the Almighty. Not their skin, but our pride, 
is rank, and smells to heaven, Nay, more, "it hath the 
primeval, eldest curse upon it, a brother's murder." For 
he that hateth his brother is a murderer ; and we all hate 
our brethren of this blood when we seek thus their segrega- 
tion and degradation. The church of the South, the church 
of the North, must be reconstructed on this basis. We talk 
of reconstruction in the State, and negro suffrage. There 
must be equal reconstruction in the Church, 

To this work dedicate yourself. Ten years only are want- 
ing to complete the first century of our national history. 
What a century has it been. How grand in promises. How 
far grander in fulfillment. Dr. Styles, of Yale College, in a 
Thanksgiving 'sermon, preached before the Legislature of Con- 
necticut, May 8, 1783, with the title, "The United States 
raised to Glory and Honor," is lavish of his prophecies on 
the fnture of America. Any but an American reading his 



THE END OE THE WAR. 601 

words would have called them the ravings of fanaticism. But 
they are more than fulfilled. His grandest dreams are trivial 
by the side of the realities of history. Our last incubus is 
cast off, cut away from us b} T the sharp knife of the Divine 
Surgeon, with great loss of blood, and almost with loss of 
national life. Yet we survive, and ere this century of our 
Lord concludes its course such a progress is to be witnessed 
materially and spiritually as we never yet imagined. 

Europe, Asia, and probably Africa, will pour forth their 
millions over the fat earth of the West and South; the mines 
will cast their inexhaus table treasures into the national lap. 
The negro will rise to posts of honor and authority in all the 
land, will sit in Congress, will rule as governor where till 
yesterday he toiled as a slave, will be settled as pastors in 
the highest pulpits, will be partners in our largest houses, 
guests in our most aristocratic parlors, residents in our 
richest palaces, and men shall smile at the idea of distinc- 
tion of color, as they now do at the divinity of slavery. 
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ shall renew the land in 
holiness and love. The Churches will melt into harmonious 
oneness, each esteeming the others better than itself. Law 
will everywhere forbid the sale of intoxicating drinks as a 
beverage, will give universal education and universal pro- 
tection. 

Thus shall the regeneration of all the lands be perfected. 
The Church shall rise to her true hights of divine brother- 
hood, the State and society shall conform to her in all their 
lower but powerful activities. The inward holiness shall 
be wrought into outward virtue. The Sabbath work shall 
crown with its ineffable glory the humbler labors of pre- 
ceding generations. The earth shall rest in gladness and 
laugh in harvests. The industry of man shall find full re- 
wards. The unity and married calm of States shall be per- 
fect and perpetual. The people of God shall be one people, 



602 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 

none biting and devouring each other, but all moving like a 
mighty army of many battalions and many commanders, 
under the Captain of our salvation, to the bloodless victory 
of the human race and the consummation of a perfect 
eternity. 

" Then comes the statelier Eden back to man ; 
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ; 
Then springs the crowning race of humankind, — 
May these things be." 



sstk&^M^ 



AMERICA'S PAST AXD FUTURE.* 






To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. " — 
Isaiah lvi. 12. 

OW many weary years contribute to the triumph 
of this hour. Standing- on this summit, behold- 
ing the glory that is breaking forth upon all our 
land, feeling the joy that pervades every breast, 
we can hardly fail to look back upon the steps that slowly 
led, through indifference, hostility, storms of war, and streams 
of blood, to these Delectable Mountains. One who hung 
delighted over the peaceful Paradise, where Adam and Eve 
in their fresh-created perfection walked in a garden of calm 
and fragrance, could not refrain from vivifying the scene 
by contrasting it with the previous elemental war, the dark- 
ness and confusion of chaos, creatures fierce and gross of 
nature, that filled the mighty carboniferous forests with 
their roar, the whole abhorent, unelevating scene : — 



* A sermon preached at Medford, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving 
Day, November 26, 1868, on the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the 
Presidency of the United States. 

(603) 



604 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

" Wrapt in impervious mists, which ever steamed 
Up from its boiling oceans, without form 
And void, it rolled around the sun, which cast 
Strange lurid lights on the revolving mass, 
But pierced not to the solid globe beneath : 
Such vast eruption of internal fires 
Had mingled sea and land. 



Earth to its center shook ; and what were seas 
Unsounded, were of half their waters drained; 
And what were wildernesses, ocean-beds ; 
And mountain ranges, from beneath upheaved, 
Clave with their granite peaks primeval plains, 
And rose sublime above the water floods ; 
Floods overflowed themselves with seas of mist, 
Which swathed in darkness all terrestrial things, — 
A world unfurnished, empty, void, and vast." 

Out of this wreck of matter came the perfection of Eden, 
and the blessedness of the holy parents of our race. As 
the angels beheld the darkness and destruction, how could 
they anticipate the coming light and life ? Only the con- 
sciousness of an indwelling and overruling God of infinite 
right, and love, and power, gave them the desired assurance. 
Resting calmly in that knowledge, they beheld the prevail- 
ing darkness, the baleful government of the Prince of the 
Power of the Air, the mighty conflict, the ever increasing- 
signs of the progress of the kingdom of God, the subjuga- 
tion of one foe after another, of fire and fog, of savagest 
beast, huge, amorphous, with many a scaly fold, voluminous 
and vast, whose presence, whether as lizard, mammoth, or 
winged and web-footed monsters, would have made the 
earth uninhabitable to man. They saw the conflict increase 
in fierceness as it began to consummate itself in the final 
victory ; the death-ocean of ice from pole to pole being the 
last, and, to other eyes than those of faith, the complete 
annihilation of all life positive and possible. But in faith 
they still looked and labored. Conspiring with their Creator, 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 605 

they aided in the resurrection of the earth from this sepul- 
cher of being, and again beheld it glowing in more beautiful 
and more abundant life on the Paradisaic morn of the human 
creation and their Edenic home . 

I. So we can note the mighty war of spiritual, and even 
of material elements, that has attended this new creation of 
our land and people in the truth and love of God. We can 
look back over centuries, and behold the beginnings of that 
iniquity whose overthrow this victory completes. Nay, 
centuries measure not its horrid life. From the first sin, 
this principle has possessed the hearts of men ; from the 
first sinner, it has found foothold in human society. " Thou 
shaft rule over her/ 7 was the estate into which one half of 
the race was plunged by the first transgressor. " Thou 
shalt rule over him/ 7 the first declaration made to Cain con- 
cerning Abel, cast a large portion of the other half into the 
same chains. The husband held his wife as property, and 
beat, petted, or sold her, as his passions prompted. The 
father owned his children, the eldest son his brothers. In 
fact, the law of sin was a law of bondage. Slavery was 
the first-born of Satan and the fallen pair ; slavery of mind, 
and heart, and body. It is the favorite term of Scripture 
to express the relation of the lost soul to its lost master. 

This iniquity developed rapidly, and prevailed like the 
flood over all the earth. Whole nations were made slaves 
in an hour ; one mighty overthrow of its protecting army 
by an invading host reduced every person in the realm to 
property. Cities were thus changed from liberty to slavery 
in a moment ; states were transformed in a day. All Israel 
went into captivity after one battle. All Egypt was re- 
duced to vassalage by one conquering hour of Persian. Gre- 
cian, or Roman arms. India 7 s multitudinous millions fell 
thus beneath the victorious stroke of a foreign general. All 
Northern Europe became the slaves of Caesar. 

" He hath brought many captives home to Rome," 



606 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

is the praise for him that Shakspeare naturally puts in the 
lips of Antony. 

Whatever mitigation this law might receive through the 
clemency of its executors, or the difficulty in its execution, 
it was still the law of society, and, as a whole, faithful- 
ly adhered to through vast ages of degraded humanity. 
Athens, in the hight of its power, had twenty slaves to one 
freeman in its population — slaves of the same blood, speech, 
and nationality as their masters. Rome had an equal pro- 
portion in her own walls, and far greater in her Italian do- 
main. The whole world was one vast plantation, where 
slaves toiled and suffered without recompense or hope. Only 
Judea, in the time of Christ, had become a free state. It 
stood alone among kingdoms, recognizing in its laws no 
property in man. 

It is an answer alike to all professed religious progress- 
ives, and to all contemners of Jewish Christianity, that this 
State stood solitary in its doctrine of the liberty of all men. 
Why had not Grecian culture and philosophy, of which we 
so loudly prate, effected a like amelioration for that beautiful 
clime ? Pericles had ruled, Phidias carved, Plato written, 
Demosthenes spoken, Socrates talked, Homer sung, and 
the men of Marathon and Thermopylae had fought ; yet 
Greece was still a state of slaves. India, too, the favorite 
haunt of modern skepticism, where it is fancied the first 
rising of modern thought and faith can be clearly seen ; 
whose Buddha and Brahma it is pretended are the sources 
of all religious truth — Avhere was India in its humanitarian 
development when Christian Judea acknowledged every 
man free and equal, and was practicing that " declaration 
of independence" which we have yet failed to fully receive ? 
India was the greatest slaveholding state in the world. A 
few of a higher caste held hundreds of millions of their 
kindred in chains — hold them to this day in more than 
adamantine fetters ; for these can be broken ; no power can 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 607 

yet dissolve, only One can ever dissolve, these bonds of 
caste — and that is the power of Christ Crucified ; to the 
formalist and unprogressive Jew a stumbling-block ; to the 
haughty-minded Greek, foolishness ; but to them that believe, 
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the 
Wisdom of God. 

This liberty the chosen nation lost by rejecting its sole 
Author, and on its captivity, the human race was plunged 
again into universal slavery. Out of this deluge that over- 
whelmed mankind in a worse than material destruction, 
society slowly emerged through the diffusion and energy of 
Christianity. The Church broke these bonds. She abolished 
slavery in Italy and the Orient. She tamed down its horrors 
in Northern Europe, and swept it away in gradual centuries 
from every European Christian country. Had she been 
more faithful, her victories would have been earlier and 
greater ; and long since she would have redeemed the world 
to Christ and Liberty. 

As it is, her work has been great and her progress steady. 
Rome broke the chains from the body if she bound them on 
the soul. Athens became Christian and free. Egypt, under 
her bishops and other clergy, emerged from her idolatry 
and her serfdom. England broke the yoke from our Saxon 
fathers, and stopped the slave trade between Ireland and 
England, that flourished even after the invasion of William 
and the erection of Victoria's throne. Kingsley, in his 
Hereward, or the "Last of the English," describes this 
traffic in language not unsuited to the Charleston and Rich- 
mond of our own generation.* 

This emancipation was not completed till our own day ; 
and the present Emperor of the Russias has the honor of 
closing the list of European sovereigns who have released 
from bondage European peoples. None of that branch of 
mankind are now held in servitude, save such as Turkey 
binds, or as on our own continent, in Brazil and Cuba, have 
* See Note XXI. 



608 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

their blood tinted with the hues of a fraternal race, soon to 
disappear from these dominions. 

II. But while slavery was thus dying at the bidding of 
Christianity, — and at her bidding only, — it still existed in 
regions unvisited by her rays, and intruded its baleful pres- 
ence into lands that had been settled exclusively in her 
interests. Driven from Europe, it took refuge in Africa. 
Denied sovereignty of men of white complexion, it infamously 
suggested to the carnal heart that abolitionism depended on 
color, not on humanity : that it was wrong — of course it 
was, now that it could no longer be sustained — to enslave 
white people, Caucasians, the ruling race, the divinely ap- 
pointed head of creation ; but that fact not only permits, it 
requires, the enslavement of the antipodal race. The white 
skin is emancipated because it is white. That logic neces- 
sitates the enslavement of the black skin. So the devil feeds 
our too susceptible hearts with the Satanism of caste, and 
sweeps the whole Christian Church — at least in America — 
into bondage to this opinion. He makes us look on our 
brother with loathing. He makes us separate him from 
ourselves as an abhorred thing. He makes us exclude him 
from our table, our pulpit, our pew, our shop, our store, our 
homes, our hearts. He diffuses such a murky mist of preju- 
dice over society, that we inhale its miasm as our constant 
atmosphere, and under its cloud work out his plans for the 
perpetuation of his power over us and our victims as long 
as he can keep us under his sinful influence. Expelled from 
the white class, this iniquity begs permission to invade the 
black and ruin it. And so a legion of evil spirits rush upon 
the hapless victim, and drive him headlong into the abyss 
of shame and agony. For three hundred and fifty years 
has this abomination flourished. From the first modern 
African slave-maker, stealer, and trader, Prince Henry of 
Portugal, the first navigator of Western Africa, and the sea- 
father of Vasco de Gama and Columbus, even until now, has 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 609 

the Afric shore echoed with the screams of these victims, 
the ocean been incarnadined with their blood. Before Amer- 
ica was discovered, from six to eight hundred Africans were 
annually imported into Portugal. The Moors were the chief 
traders, and their horses their chief coin. They bought ten 
to -eighteen men for a Barbary steed. 

Columbus deserved his end for his treatment of the In- 
dians, who received him as a god, and to whom he became 
a demon. He stole them by the thousand, and sold them 
in Spanish ports. He offered to supply four thousand an- 
nually to Ferdinand and Isabella, and estimated the revenue 
to the crown, from their sale, at fifty thousand dollars per 
annum. He was the father of all the Indian barbarities that 
yet curse our government, and make our line of advance to 
the Pacific Sea a red line of the red man's blood. But Co- 
lumbus did not introduce the negro to save the Indian ; nor 
did Las Casas, the emancipator of the Indian, as is too fre- 
quently charged. He accepted him to his subsequent regret, 
but he did not first import him. The African was brought 
over by the earliest traders as an item of commerce, when 
as yet Indian slavery was flourishing, and bishops, priests, 
kings, governors, and colonists alike flourished upon it. 
He was a captive here as soon as his American brother. 
He has outlived him as a slave, he may also as a free- 
man. 

From that hour to this you see the strides of this giant 
iniquity. How it overrun all the India Islands, the neigh- 
boring shores north and south, crept down to Brazil and up 
to Mexico, crossed over to the Pacific, and swept the coast 
from its southern to its northern belt of ice and so-called 
civilization ; how it struck at the Christian colonies of France 
and England, and whatever their diversities and hostilities 
of creed, compelled them alike into bondage to this crime. 
The Puritans, Churchmen, Papists, and Quakers, the sons 
of the martyrs of Holland and France, Huguenots and Sy- 
39 



610 AMEEICA'S PAST AND FUTUEE. 

aodists of Dort, the followers of Cromwell and of Charles, 
all creeds, classes, tongues and tribes, plunged into this 
cruelty and crime. And to this day, those who bear this 
mixed religion and national blood in their veins are the bit- 
terest foes in the world of the negro and of emancipation. 
They despise him in all the North, they hate his liberation 
in all the South. Of one blood are we and our rebellious 
brethren, in our near origin, and in our feelings toward our 
long-enslaved kindred, the oldest of our race from the oldest 
of our continents. 

III. The controversy God has waged with us because of 
this sin we all know by heart, especially its last and blood- 
iest chapters. We know how our Constitution admitted 
seemingly, and in the intent of its founders, this iniquity, 
though it also enunciated principles that made it actually 
unconstitutional. We all know how Washington violated 
these fundamental principles in signing the first fugitive 
slave bill ; how Monroe and Congress again violated them 
in approving of the extension of slavery into free territory 
beyond the Mississippi ; how the Church and the State 
descended together to the pit of destruction, and sank so 
low that the Church refused to listen to the testimony of one 
of its sisters if she had been ravished of her virtue by her 
owner, provided he was also a member of the same church; 
while separate States inflicted upon these victims every con- 
ceivable and inconceivable barbarity, and the nation forbid 
any one from harboring those who might escape from this 
den of lions, and even prohibited his refusing to assist in 
their recapture under penalty of heavy fines and imprison- 
ment. 

Thus Church and State were married by and to the Devil. 
Thus an offspring burst forth in all the land and in every 
household of bitter contempt and malice toward God's 
children and our own brethren ; an offspring of pride, and 
passion, and avarice ; an offspring that made the minister of 



ELECTION OE ULYSSES S. GRANT. 611 

Christ the minister of Satan ; that erected the auction-block 
for human souls under the shadow of Christian churches ; 
that made our flag protect cargoes of chained citizens on the 
long ocean pathway from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande ; 
that filled thousands of pulpits with prayers and preachings, 
to which God responded, " My soul hateth ; " that changed our 
hearts to stone before the beseeching cries of our own brothers 
and sisters ; that wrought evil after evil by the arm of the 
State and the sinful blessing of the Church, until the line 
forbidding slavery in millions of miles of territory was blotted 
out ; the rights of the man of color, whatever the dimness 
of his tint, declared invalid before any national court ; the 
right to prevent his introduction as a slave into any free 
State taken away ; and slavery had become, in the language 
of its most eminent advocate, " the corner-stone of the Con- 
stitution. " 

Against this prevalence of iniqirh/y God raised up enemies, 
in the Church and out of it, in the nation and abroad ; in the 
principle with which he fired our hearts, and the scourges 
with which he compelled our sins to chastise us ; everywhere 
the forces of the Almighty were aroused and organized to 
confront this gigantic sin. How His flag sunk and rose in 
the varying conflict. How the hearts of His followers failed 
them for fear, and inflamed them with hope, as alternate 
failure and success attended their efforts and their prayers. 
Especially did fear possess them as they saw the end of all 
their preliminary battles ; as clear and more clear the deter- 
mination of the slaveholder " to fight it out on this line " 
became evident, and confidence in the willingness of his foe 
to meet him on the bloody field failed to be developed with 
equal certainty. Many were the attempts made, not by the 
slavocrat, but by his antagonists, to avoid this issue. We 
offered to extend the Missouri line to the Pacific coast. We 
offered to introduce an amendment into the Constitution for- 
bidding the National Government from ever emancipating a 



612 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

slave. We kissed their hands and feet in fear of the threat 
of disunion which they constantly flourished over us. Many 
went yet further, and advocated the dismissal of the slave- 
holding section. Even some of our wisest leaders fell into 
this snare. Phillips and Garrison, Chase and Greeley, ad- 
vised this course. They did not believe the people would 
endure the test to which the Union would compel them. 
They feared slavery would subdue the North, rather than 
the North abolish slavery. They dreamed that, cut off from 
the North, the slave would soon compel his master to eman- 
cipation. But the wisdom of God is wiser than men. He 
allowed His enemies to most daringly defy our national prin- 
ciples, organization, and even existence. He strengthened 
His friends to meet defiance with defiance, treason with 
faithfulness, hatred of the country and its principles with in- 
creasing flame of devotion to every vital national idea. They 
sought to extirpate its love of liberty. He excited it by 
innumerable harangues. They denounced the Union. He 
fed the sacred flame of devotion to this outward and essen- 
tial body of the national soul. So, when the night of stag- 
gering weakness and seeming dissolution came ; when men's 
hearts were everywhere failing themselves with fear, and 
with a looking for the things that were about to come upon 
the earth ; when the head of the nation threw up his imbecile 
hands in confessed powerlessness, and allowed his chiefs of 
State to rob his treasury and arsenals, to scatter his petty 
navy and pettier army, while he, like a sick girl, cried " No 
coercion," " I shall be the last President of the United 
States," as he certainly will be the least ; when the Pres- 
ident elect had to steal into his capital in disguise, and 
foreign observers were writing home, " The Constitution of 
the United States can be bought on Broadway for three 
cents, and that is a higher price than the people set upon 
it" " — even then the slowly-growing opposition was solidify- 
ing itself for the coming struggle, and at the first word of 



ELECTION OE ULYSSES S. GRANT. 613 

command from the authoritative source, sprang up in arms 
as cheerfully, as enthusiastically, as multitudinously as the 
angels leaped to the call of their Lord for the overthrow of 
the rebellious host, and the unity and liberty of the Heavenly 

Kingdom. 

" The mighty quadrate, joined 
Of union irresistible, moved on 
In silence, the bright legions to the sound 
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed 
Heroic ardor, to adventurous deeds 
Under their godlike leaders, in the cause 
Of God and his Messiah." 

IV. That struggle gave birth to our coming President. 
He was one of those who saw and felt the full force of the 
conflict, at least in its material form. He measured the 
greatness of the war before a soldier had been summoned to 
arms, or a blow had been struck by the enemy. In that 
doleful winter of our weakness he, the humble merchant of 
a country town, was carefully studying the forces of the 
rebellion. His minister spent an evening with him at that 
time, and saw him as he rose up in the enthusiasm of his 
discourse, and stood with form dilated, filled with the vast- 
ness of his theme. When he left, he said to his wife, " Did 
you notice how much Mr. Grant resembled Napoleon ? " 
Little did his guests think how complete that resemblance 
was, and how all the world, before three years elapsed, 
would recognize him as the successor to this soldier in the 
military annals of the century. 

His wife had a clearer vision. To this same gentleman, 
expressing on the morning of his departure hopes that her 
husband would return in safety, she replied, " I hope he will 
return major general, or something of that sort." She was 
probably the only person in the country that saw this capa- 
city or entertained these expectations. His father to this 
day seems to have no apprehension of him. He still says, 
" Ulysses accomplishes all he does through hard work/' 



614 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

having no perception of that genius which alone makes that 
hard work create victory out of defeat, and a world of re- 
nown out of a chaos of ruin. 

1. Six years ago no man was more unknown. To-day his 
deeds are written broadest of all our soldiers' on the pages 
of our history. No general before him has an equal record. 
He has made the fields of Trenton, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, 
Buena Vista, and Cherubusco sink into insignificance beside 
the names of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Richmond. 
His military power is sure. 

But greater than his prowess is the cause he served. He 
saved the best of nations ; he slew the worst of crimes. 
Through his gift alone was the Republic of America pre- 
served unbroken, preserved at all. No other general ap- 
peared that seemed equal to the necessity. Sherman's gifts 
were not such as could put squadrons in the field, nor con- 
duct tedious and perplexing sieges. Sheridan could hurl 
his forces like storm-driven waves upon the line of his foe, 
scattering them like spray in the swiftness and mightiness 
of his blows. Thomas alone revealed powers that might 
have won for him the chieftainship. But even he failed to 
reveal the combination of organizing, steadfast, far-seeing, 
daring, and impetuous qualities that tower in the character 
of Grant. 

He has kept intact our vast boundaries, and insured their 
vaster expansion. He has changed the contempt of all 
nations into respect, and implanted a dread of our prowess 
and our ideas that is a sure precursor of a fast-hastening 
change in all their states conformable to our triumphant 
principles. He has insured the essential extension of 
America over the world. Already the United States of 
Europe are openly advocated in congresses from all her peo- 
ples ; and that more distant and dubious title, the United 
States of Asia, looms up mistily from the far horizon. Even 
the United States of Africa will be born in due time into the 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GEANT. 615 

family of republics ; while the United States of America shall 
encompass the whole continent in her oceanic lines. Thus 
from this victory over the rebellion will arise a fraternity of 
nations, few in number, divided by no alienation of lan- 
guage, government, or faith ; ultimately to become one with 
each other, with Christ, with God. 

To this consummation the man just elected to the head- 
ship of the Republic has chiefly contributed. Joshua's arm 
alone could batter down the walls of Ai, and Gath, and 
Askelon. Moses, the Lincoln Liberator, must give way to 
the conquering warrior. David's military genius alone 
enabled Israel to complete its appointed boundaries, and 
send its banners and its laws from the Euphrates to the 
Nile. So the mighty foes of this nation — mightier than 
ever before arose from the heart of any State for its over- 
throw, and failed in their undertaking — could never have 
been suppressed by any genius save one that instinctively 
grasped the whole field of deadly debate, and as instinctive- 
ly discerned the path to the mastery. 

This ability may have included more than it had op- 
portunity for exhibition. Had France succeeded in Mexico, 
and proceeded thence to assail the Union, his acquaintance 
with that territory might have been called into requisition 
to smite this new foe in the farther South. Had England 
followed out the instincts of all her ruling classes, and 
engaged in the support of the rebellion, even to the re- 
fastening the fetters on the neck of the slave, his military 
genius would have reenacted the victory of Scott on the 
field of Lundy's Lane, and the triumph of Wolfe on the 
Plains of Abraham. The controversy of Nova Scotia would 
have been settled by its absorption into our nationality, and 
the ambition of Canada been more than gratified by becom- 
ing an integer in the Continental Republic. 

His administration may witness this Northern and South- 
ern extension of our boundaries by the arts of peace, which, 



616 AMERICA'S PAST AND EUTURE. 

had France and England dared to enter our field of civil 
debate, might have been speedily accomplished by deeds 
of war. 

2. But while we thus linger around the services which 
our General and President have rendered to our nation and 
to all nations, and behold the pleasant visions of coming con- 
sequences of his great victories, we should be forgetful of 
his chief victory and its chief duty if we failed to dwell upon 
the grandest results of his arms. Unlike all other great 
generals, his military fame is indissolubly united with the 
emancipation of millions of slaves. Alexander drove back 
the Eastern powers, and put Europe for the first time where 
England and Russia keep her to-day, on the neck of Asia. 
But he gave no people their liberty. His triumphs were 
military alone, or at the best political. Caesar, undoubtedly 
the first of warriors in the ante-Christian ages, reduced free 
nations to slavery, and added vast multitudes of bondmen 
to the already glutted man-market of Italy. To no race nor 
man did his powers bring liberty. He even put the dagger 
to the Roman Republic, and was the acknowledged founder 
of an imperial dynasty whose name is yet boastfully as- 
sumed as their own by a ruling house of Europe, while his 
spirit animates the most despotic of emperors. 

Of every later captain the same sad fact is true. Napo- 
leon reduced liberated France to bondage. Wellington tied 
the English and European nations to aristocratic and despotic 
institutions. Only Washington and Cromwell made their 
arms deliver their peoples ; and they did not break such 
yokes or bestow such liberty as it was given to our General 
to achieve. His genius was employed not to enslave, but 
to emancipate ; not to beat back aggressive tyrannies, but to 
uproot them ; not to release from civil bondage, but from 
human ; not to save states, but men. 

This puts his name as far above his rivals as the deeds of 
humanity surpass those of mere ability. The inventor of a 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GEANT 617 

needle-gun may show as great genius as the inventor of the 
needle in the sewing-machine. But the latter has made his 
talent relieve the toil and enrich the gains of millions of the 
poor, while the former only increases the number of the 
slain in the field of battle. The mere military genius, as 
such, is often the least valuable gift of God to man. The 
poet is of more worth ; the preacher a far better blessing ; 
the inventor, and discoverer, and educator are his superior. 
He is but a boxer on a bigger scale. He fights with others' 
fists, as John Morrissey gambles with others' hands, as 
every master works through his subordinates. He masses 
force, and hurls it upon opposing force. If his force crushes 
its contrary, it is but the gift of a thunderbolt, an earth- 
quake, a trip-hammer. For what is his genius exerted ? 
That alone decides its value. Byron writes as good poetry 
as Cowper; perhaps better. But which serves God and his 
generation with his heaven-given gifts ? Davis had as great 
fitness for statesmanship as Lincoln. Whose talents are put 
to divine using ? It is the end they serve that makes their 
real value. 

So Grant's genius was fortunately devoted to the highest 
ends. His military skill, like Stephenson's inventive talent, 
like Wesley's poetic, was employed by God for the best 
possible service. He struck down not only an army, but an 
institution. He won not victory merely, but liberty. He 
rescued not imperiled troops, but an imprisoned race. What 
God might have done through others had he not arisen can- 
not be told ; what He did do through him can never be told. 
Every father then in chains who walks to-day a freeman ; 
who meets his joyful family around his own thanksgiving 
table ; every such mother who clasps her babe the closer to 
her breast, as she feels that no power can snatch it from 
her arms except He who gave it, and He always leaves it 
on her heart, whether He holds it here or in heaven ; every 
child of these parents playing in the unconscious gladness 



618 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

of childhood, not knowing what wonderful brightness lights 
up his path that never illumined their childhood — these 
millions owe their innumerable millions of blessings under 
God to his military ability. Surely, never was a gift divine 
more divinely honored. 

V. What means this election ? 

The past is past. The future is before us. No man, no 
nation can go back. We must advance. The London po- 
liceman's word in a thronged thoroughfare is the order of 
the Creator to mankind — " Move on ! " What is the path 
on which he orders us to march ? What are the principles 
which this election is designed by him to settle ? 

1. It ordains order. The primal element of all progress 
is peace. Crystals can only be formed in still media. Even 
the fiery uprushings of the volcano make no gems until they 
sink in repose. Grant's election assures that condition. He 
has met the enemy on its last organized field. He has put 
to rout the assassins as he did the soldiers. The ghosts 
of rebel fighters, as the Ku Klux profess to be, revisiting the 
glimpses of the moon with revolvers in their skeleton hands, 
and murder in their fleshless hearts, will subside again into 
their unquiet graves. Rest, perturbed spirit of slavery and 
murder, rest. The man who subdued you living, will sub- 
due your dead. Those that have dared to assume these 
grave clothes for the indulgence of their own diabolical 
malice, must cease their bloodthirstiness or join their dead 
comrades. Through all the South shall there be as com- 
plete peace and liberty as throughout the North. " Charley," 
said our Presidentelect to one of his friends, " Charley, if I 
am President, every man everywhere shall be protected in 
the liberty of uttering his opinions." 

That vow will be kept. Every rebel knows that it will. 
He has seen the man who says it at Fort Donelson and 
Shiloh, at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, in the Wilderness 
and at Richmond ; and he knows that he always keeps his 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 619 

word. In Kentucky, he made peace by driving- out the 
rebel soldier ; lie will again, by driving out the rebel assassin. 
In Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Virginia he made peace, 
sending 1 " the great river un vexed to the sea," sweeping 
away- all armed hostility from Nashville around lo its capital, 
driving the enemy's cannon from the Rapidan to Richmond, 
and from Richmond into our own victorious lines. They 
fear his arm. They will crouch, and tremble, and obey. As 
the devil and his angels fled and fell before the mighty 
Michael, Prince of God, so will this new revelation of the 
same evil spirit submit to this new revelation of the decree 
of the Almighty. 

It is a glad dawn for our loyal brethren. 

The fugitive loyalist, black and white, has feared the 
glance of a passer-by, as if it were, as it has too often been, 
the glare of a murderer. He has trembled when the night 
closed around his dwelling, lest the ghostly knock should 
call him from his slumbers to the sleep of death. Never were 
the lamentations of Jerusalem's prophet over the afflictions 
of his land more painfully fitted to any people. " We got 
our bread," must they say, " with the peril of our lives." 
" They hunt our steps, that we cannot go into our streets." 
" Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heavens ; 
they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us 
in the wilderness." Most sadly identical, also, is the cause 
of all the misery of Zion and the South. " For the sins of 
her prophets and the iniquities of her priests that have shed 
the blood of the just in the midst of her, they have wandered 
as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves 
with blood, so that men could not touch their garments. 
The Lord hath accomplished his fury ; he hath poured his 
fierce anger, and it hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath 
devoured the foundations thereof." In this awful condition 
of promiscuous massacre, the helpless ones have turned 
despairing eyes to a hostile President and a powerless 



620 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

Congress. They have made every Christian heart exclaim 
with the Christian poet, over like horrible barbarities in- 
flicted by the Papal fiends on their Protestant brethren of 
Vaudois : — 

" Avenge, 0, Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold." 

On this darkness peace breaks. The cabin shall be sacred 
as the castle, the laborer shall toil and travel unharmed. 
Complexion shall not imperil life, but shall be a bond of 
mutual affection. The impartial President shall fold all in 
his protecting arms, and the South shall at last accept in 
practice the motto of Massachusetts, as she has already 
adopted her principles. Under liberty shall she enjoy calm 
quiet through the sword. 

2. But if order is heaven's first law, it is only the first. 
Something must be done. "Quiet, to quick bosoms, is a 
hell." Quiet is only a condition for life to work in. What 
is the life that is to work in this condition ? 

It has revealed its earliest stages. The universality of 
suffrage and the equality of legal and civil rights. These 
steps have been taken in the South in form ; but they are 
not yet everywhere successful in spirit. They have not been 
yet taken in all the North in form, though they are largely 
successful here in spirit. In both regions form and spirit 
must unite. The South must everywhere cease to forbid 
the legitimate voter his suffrage ; the North must every- 
where cease to forbid its citizens from becoming legal voters. 
Georgia and Connecticut to-day are practically united. 
Both exclude law-abiding and patriotic citizens from the 
ballot. One does it with Colt's revolvers, the other with 
Colt's workmen. Ohio is as wicked as Louisiana. She has 
sunken from a hundred thousand majority for liberty to fifteen 
thousand, because she refused to do this God-demanded duty. 
She will go into bondage to the enemy, unless she is de- 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 621 

livered from this crime. Universal suffrage must be enacted 
and enforced by the National Government. If we make the 
South allow her black voters their rights, we must also, 
through a constitutional amendment, or by congressional 
enactment, make the North do equal justice. It can only 
be done by one of these causes. The intensity of prejudice 
would to-day make almost every State that voted for Grant, 
where this suffrage does not exist, vote against its bestowal. 
Missouri cast her ballot for Grant and Slavery. She voted 
down the rights of man, and voted up the representative of 
these rights. She struck at her citizens while she struck 
for the nation. All her sisters would do likewise. Iowa 
and Minnesota would have no followers in this right action 
to-day. 

It must be done at Washington. The Constitution de- 
mands it. The President should urge it — Congress ordain 
it. Only thus can the blot which stains this jubilee-hour be 
wiped away. General Grant has not received all the votes 
that legitimately belong to him in this election. Thousands 
of brown hands would have gladly put his name into the 
ballot-box, had not this wicked prejudice forbade. They 
felt the insult and the ignominy all the more keenly as 
those same hands have pulled the trigger in the hottest 
of the fight, under the same great General, for the salva- 
tion of the country. To-day they are refused the privilege 
of serving in the bloodless battle, while it is now years 
since they were allowed, or gladly hastened, or were in not 
a few cases even compelled, to stand upon the fiercest 
ridge of war. 

How long shall this evil continue ? Every one must labor 
and pray that the root of slavery shall be extirpated, and 
that our President at his reelection may receive the vote of 
every man who shall desire to express his gratitude for the 
liberty which he has secured to them from this cruel fetter 
of ingratitude and injustice. 



622 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

3. But equality at the polls is not the only work laid upon 
the coming government. There must be such a disposition 
of its patronage, such a steadfast expression of its convic- 
tion, such an employment of its influence, as will tend to 
the abolition of the whole mass of prejudice that still defiles 
the national heart. I am aware that this evil cannot be 
utterly abolished by any enactments. The leprosy lies deep 
within. It dwells in our churches, in our souls, in our 
education, in society. It still makes us look on many a hu- 
man face with repulsion which is of the complexion of the 
mother of our Lord — nay, of the Lord himself.* It still 
leads us to erect barriers between us and our kindred, and 
to make us and them talk of " our race 77 as if they and we 
had a different parentage, Savior, and eternity. It must 
come to an end. It is coming to an end. This election is 
a great advance toward that end. If the Administration as 
faithfully adhere to its ruling idea, and put men into office 
everywhere without regard to color and with regard only 
to capacity, it will greatly prosper this great reform. Let 
him make Frederick Douglass a member of his cabinet, and 
the nation will commend and imitate his courage. 

But under it, as well as through it, will the work go for- 
ward. Senators and representatives will enter Congress of 
the condemned hue. They have alread}^ become mayors, 
secretaries of state, lieutenant governors ; they hold no small 
influence and office in the uplifted South; they must yet 
more. Mississippi, with her half a million ; South Carolina, 
with her majority of this tint ; Tennessee, where they stand 
between the loyal whites and annihilation ; Louisiana, where 
they have wealth, culture, and talents in their ranks — these 
must cast down all bars and gates, and let the tides of hu- 
man, civil, social, and Christian life flow freely among all 
the people. To this complexion shall we come at last. 

4. Yet more : our feelings of aversion will change to feel- 
ings of regard. The complexion at which we now profess 

* See Note XXII. 



ELECTION OE ULYSSES S. GRANT. 623 

to revolt we shall look upon with pleasure. Vice is not the 
only thing that is at first hated and afterward embraced. 
Virtue is more frequently subject to this experience. It is 
very rare that a real gift of God is fallen in love with at first 
sight. How few behold in religion all the charms with 
which she is divinely invested. How many turn with dis- 
gust from her pleading, pleasing countenance. How few 
are instinctively drawn to temperance, to study, to work. 
The world beholds in vice everything charming, in virtue 
eveiything repulsive. But acquaintance changes this ex- 
perience, and we cling to the good we at first disdained. 
Nay, we usually are the more fond in proportion as we were 
hostile. It is the law of our nature that we choose that 
which we say we will never have. If you hear a person 
declaring that he will never be a Methodist, be sure that he 
will yet be of the most earnest type of that religion. If he 
says, " I will be anything sooner than a Congregationalist," 
you may mark him as fore-ordained to be a sober deacon of 
that orthodox church. When the young lady says, " I'll 
marry anybody but Mr. Simperton," she will soon be found 
casting her most languishing meshes around that just de- 
spised youth. When pompous young Jones says, "I hate 
the very looks and even name of Miss Marigold," be you 
certain he will ere long say to her, " Your face is angelic, 
you name is sweeter than the lutes of paradise. I can only 
live in the light of your affection." So shall we treat our 
brethren and sisters of color. We shall " see Helen's 
beauty in the brow of Egypt." We shall say, " What a 
rich complexion is that brown skin." " It is Italian, Greek, 
Oriental, perfect. How far it excels our chalky hue." We 
already paint our houses after their color. Our girls crinkle 
their hair after the natural curliness of their sisters' locks. 
This is one of God's modes of curing us of color-blindness. 
We shall see, as Mrs. Kemble says, that there are qualities 
in the human skin superior to a pink and white tint, and 



624 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

that in velvety softness, in fineness of fiber, in richness of 
tone, this despised flesh surpasses our own.* 

We shall be attracted to this hue because it is one of 
God's creatures, and a beautiful one too ; because it is a 
favorite hue of the human race ; because, chiefly, we have 
most wickedly loathed and scorned it. He will have re- 
venge, and will yet compel us to discern the loveliness of 
this most abhorred virtue, and to become enamored of it. 
The Song of Songs will have a more literal fulfillment than it 
has ever confessedly had in America ; and the long-existing, 
divinely-implanted admiration of Caucasians for black but 
comely maidens, be the proudly acknowledged and honorably 
gratified life of Northern and Southern gentlemen. 

But this law rests on no mere quip of the fancy, nor is it 
a rebound of a vehement passion, as wrongfully right as it 
had been wrongfully wrong. It is the grand undertone of 
all marriage. It is the Creator's mode of compelling the 
race to overleap the narrow boundaries of families and tribes, 
into which blood, so called, invariably degenerates. 

"Not like with like, but like with difference," 

is the law of marriage. The light complexioned turns to the 
dark, and the dark to the light, as day to night and night to 

* These are her exact words : " Their skins are all (I mean of blacks 
generally) infinitely finer and softer than the skins of white people. 
Perhaps you are not aware that among the white race the finest grained 
skins generally belong to persons of dark complexion. 

" While I am speaking of negro countenances, there is another beauty 
which is not at all unfrequent among those I see here. A finely-shaped 
oval face — and those who know (as all painters and sculptors, all who 
understand beauty do) how much expression there is in the outline of 
the head, and how very rare it is to see a well-formed face, will be apt 
to consider this a higher matter than any coloring, of which, indeed, the 
red and white one so often admired is by no means the most rich, 
picturesque, or expressive." — Journal of a Residence on a Georgia 
Plantation in 1838-9, by Frances Ann Kemhle. Pages 41, 42. Harper 
& Brothers. 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 625 

day. The tall seek the short, and the short the tall ; the 
small the large, and the large the small. Opposite tem- 
peraments also thus incline to each other. Bishop Morris 
says that he can select husbands and their wives in a large 
company by this law of like and difference. Contrast whets 
appetite. Dr. Holmes's ten lovers dangling in the silken 
noose on the fatal trap of Cupid, being asked the color of 
the eyes that caused their ruin, — 

" Ten shadowy lips said ' heavenly blue,' 
And ten accused ' the darker hue.' " 

The last five of these victims were undoubtedly blue-eyed 
swains, and the first of brown complexion. 

By this law only will yellow-haired Germany and dark- 
skinned France become one. Only thus will the mediaeval 
feud between light-eyed England and dark-eyed Ireland 
come to an end. Let their youths follow their instincts, 
and the differences that now seem barriers of. eternity, will 
become magnets of eternity. Thus, too, will our dividings 
cease. The lightest and darkest of the children of Adam 
and Noah are divinely planted together in this land, that 
they may, by obeying this law of God, work out the per- 
fect oneness of the race of man. 

Already, too, our romancers and poets, the imaginative 
fore-flyers of the slower-footed fact, are putting this future 
into their fascinating tales, and all the greedy crowd of novel 
readers are finding their freshest morsels flavored with this 
celestial truth. The stage makes an octoroon a heroine, 
and wins thousands to the admiration of a color on the 
boards, which they still falsely profess to detest in the par- 
lor. Mrs. Child, in her "Romance of the Republic/' gives 
a vivid portraiture of the wrongs and rights of this married 
life and love in conflict with the curse of caste. Anna 
Dickinson waxes yet bolder, and, in her " What Answer ? n 
shows how inevitable, how beautiful is this true affection, 
40 



626 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

despite, nay, including this difference of color. And the 
hour is not far off when the white-hued husbaud shall boast 
of the dusky beauty of his wife, and the Caucasian wife 
shall admire the sun-kissed countenance of her husband, as 
deeply, and as unconscious of the present ruling abhorrence 
as is his admiration of her lighter tint. Desdemona was as 
deeply fascinated by Othello's visage, as was he by Desde- 
mona's. That hour is not coming — it already is. Not a 
few of these marriages which God has made, and whose 
legal validity man, in some instances, has reluctantly ac- 
knowledged, are already filling homes with happiness, and 
both prophesying and leading the way to the future unity 
and blessedness of America. Amalgamation is God's word, 
declaring the oneness of man, and ordaining its universal 
recognition. Who art thou that tightest against God ? 

5. But General Grant's peace opens the way for yet fur- 
ther victories, if any in your minds can be further. The 
suffrage of woman must follow that of the African. The 
proudest female must march behind the lowliest negro. She 
is a citizen already, frequently a tax-payer, always of equal 
intelligence, often of superior virtue to man. She is our 
mother ; and who believes he knows more than his mother, 
or is better able to understand and exercise any duty ? She 
is our wife ; who x that deserves a wife believes himself 
the superior of that wedded soul ? She is our sister ; and 
who does not know that when in school together she more 
frequently led him in scholarship than he her ? She is 
of the Commonwealth, having equal rights with every other 
member. She is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. 
Surely, all enforced exclusion of her from her just claims is 
the greatest injustice. If we preeminently despise the man 
who strikes a woman, how should we feel toward the State 
who thus strikes down all its women, and robs them of all 
power of defense from its blows ? 

Above all, we need her help. Christ is seeking to estab- 



ELECTION OP ULYSSES S. GRANT. 627 

lish His empire in the earth. It is an empire of peace, of 
unity, of righteousness, of love. It is to be established in 
good-willing men, in holy laws, in sacred institutions, in 
purified society. How can this be done except by the co- 
operation of the best and most numerous members of that 
society ? Only by woman's vote can the kingdom of God 
be completely established. Only thus can we save the State 
from debauchery and utter demoralization. 

That work will go forward. It is advancing everywhere ; 
and when the next election comes may we see our sisters 
sitting by us, and transforming the dirty, smoky atmosphere 
of the voting-rooms into sweet and quiet parlors, full of 
pleasure and peace. 

The temperance movement must go forward. It has been 
held back by the imperative demands of the cause of free- 
dom. It met with a repulse from misjudging men, under 
wicked leaders ; but it will rally and move on. It has a 
grand foundation laid in the convictions of every heart, the 
conclusions of every understanding, the decisions of courts, 
the statistics of jails and almshouses, the annals of crime, a 
generation of totally abstaining people, and the success of 
the experiment of prohibition. Every good and evil inure 
to its benefit. With the departure of the giant crime of 
Slavery to its own hell, the movement against its hardly 
inferior associate will be recommenced. We have exchanged 
the slaveholder's ring for the whisky ring. The one elected 
Presidents ; the other has preserved one of them in his un- 
deserved seat. We have abolished the one ; we must the 
other. To this reform every youth should consecrate him- 
self. In every State it should be agitated. Congress should 
be implored to establish it in the Territories and the District 
of Columbia. The new South must adopt it to save her 
new citizens from utter demoralization. Great will be the 
happiness of the nation when no village shall be cursed with 
a grogshop, when every city shall be as pure from this vice 



628 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

as the rivers of Eden, when our youth shall be untainted 
with this appetite, and our men shall not err through strong 
drink. May that hour soon break upon the waiting realm, 
and National Prohibition of all that can intoxicate deliver 
our land from its last and heaviest burden. 

Not a few other blessings wait on the coming hours. As 
clouds of angel faces surround the heads of victor saints, 
misty yet distinct in beauty, so do clouds of reforms, the 
faces of the true angels, messengers of God to man, encom- 
pass the victor President. 

Black were the clouds about the head of Lincoln when 
first he became the head of the nation. A winter storm of 
darkness and death beat upon his head. How dark, how 
dreadful that hour ! The flush of morning joy at his success 
was instantly extinguished in the sulphurous folds, shooting 
lightnings, rumbling thunders, portending ruin. How sad- 
ly, wearisomely, patiently did he wade through the sea of 
troubles, and by opposing, end them. A slightly brighter 
cloud encompassed the last election. Still it was a dreary 
mixture of light and darkness. Grant was still held at bay 
before Kichmoncl. Sherman yet lay in the heart of the 
enemy's country, and the march to the sea was but a crazy 
dream of those two generals, as it seemed to loyal and rebel 
minds. Thomas had scarcely relieved Nashville of its be- 
leaguered hosts. Gold still hung high above the hundreds. 
Europe still believed and hoped that Jefferson Davis had 
created a nation. Mexico was still a principality of France. 
Charleston was the same haughty hold of slavedom. 'Mobile 
snarled defiance from all her forts at all our fleets. Lee was 
still the bepraised general, far before Grant, in English and 
in rebel judgments. Slaves were still held by the millions 
in every State, from Kentucky, by way of Virginia and the 
sea-line, up to Arkansas. Our poor boys were still rotting 
to death by the thousands at Andersonville and in the Libby 
Prison. Much had been done ; but all would be lost were 



ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 629 

not much more done. His reelection was but a pledge, a 
sign of pluck, a charge on the enemy's lines, a determina- 
tion never to submit or yield till the victory, how far soever 
distant, should be attained. To-day all this is past ; and 
the new heavens open around us in abundant light. Amer- 
ican ideas are breaking in pieces all nations. They have 
invaded England, and elected the first People's Parliament 
that ever sat in her realm ; they have overrun Germany, 
and unified that long disparted nation ; they have entered 
Spain, overturned the Inquisition, driven forth a ruler 
whose seat had been held by her family for three hundred 
years, and probably in some line of her blood for a far longer 
time, and are even now discussing the establishment of the 
Republic of Iberia. The British Provinces have organized 
a nationality which is a precursor of their admission into 
the greater nationality of America. Mexico has expelled 
Napoleon, and sustains her own independence, preparatory 
to her absorption into our domain. 

In enterprise the world is also careering like a ship before 
the wind. The girdle of the nation will belt her zone before 
another year, and our President enter the Pacific cities — 
the longest journey ever made by the head of a nation 
through its territory. The South will be filled with peace- 
ful, loving, laboring populations. Emigration will set in 
from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the islands of the sea ; and 
the world make gigantic strides to the glory and calm of 
the millennial year. 

To this work, and honor, and reward may all be devoted. 
Let Christ abolish sin from your souls, of whatever sort, by 
His indwelling grace. Let your heart become His peaceful 
realm, with its every passion, thought, and purpose subject 
to His sway. Labor by every word and work to make all 
other hearts equally perfect. Strive to bring the laws of 
society into subjection to His control. Root up the gnarled 



630 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 

tusks of prejudice. Toil cheerfully, hopefully, faithfully, to 
bring in the Grand Sabbatic Year, the Jubilee of Heaven. 

" The visions seen far off, and sang of old 
By holy seers and prophets, grasped by faith, 
And longed for, though the half could ne'er be told 
In language, nor by hope itself conceived, 
"Will have accomplishment, — a waking bliss, — 
The rest foreshadowed by the Church of God, 
The golden dawn of Everlasting Day." 



NOTES. 



The Fugitive Slave Bill. — (Page 1.) 



After a struggle of over seven months, the bill for the rendition of 
fugitives passed Congress, September 13, 1850. It was the first act of 
the national government in avowed support of the institution of slavery, 
after the great debate had sprung up. Its previous laws of this sort 
had been enacted in the state of darkness that had beclouded the pop- 
ular mind concerning the duty. In the conflict that had been raging for 
nearly twenty years, the slave power had met with sympathy from the 
general government, in its refusal to receive petitions, in the attempt to 
purge the mails of what were called " incendiary publications," and in 
other minor expressions of hostility to abolitionism. But it had never 
done anything in direct support of slavery. This act was of that char- 
acter. 

It immediately caused intense excitement in all the Free States, and 
the question of the prerogatives of law was universally discussed. 
Pulpits defended not this act especially, but the duty of obeying every 
act of legislation, as the only foundation upon which society could 
exist. They also in all cases apologized for, and in most cases defended, 
the system of slavery. Among many others, two sermons, setting forth 
this view with much acuteness, were published in the " Journal of Com- 
merce." The public mind was made timid by these warnings and plead- 
ings, and the cause of humanity seemed in danger of destruction through 
fear of touching the sacred ark of law. 

But God raised up many defenders of His imperilled cause. Pulpit 
contended with pulpit, press with press. Out of the conflict the public 
conscience grew to a clear perception of the principle, that that law only 
can be law, in its true sovereignty, which embodies the conscience of 
man and dwells in the bosom of God. 

(631) 



632 NOTES. 

II. 

The Assault on Charles Sumneb. — (Page 57.) 

The Nebraska Bill brought forth fruit after its kind. Conceived in 
iniquity, it bred civil war. The seat of this war was in the southern 
territory of Kansas, though the act that inaugurated it was known by 
the name of the upper territory of Nebraska. As the compromise repeal 
was not followed immediately by an enactment recognizing slavery as 
existent in these dependencies, it was evident that if the North should 
first settle the territory, she would have some chance to shape its char- 
acter. Emigrant Aid Societies were, therefore, established, and every 
appliance put in force to stimulate immigration. Bold leaders guided 
bold followers to the first battle-field in America, where blood mingled 
freely with the ballot as an arbiter in the strife. Heroes sprang up al- 
most autochthonous. Men never known before became known forever, 
of whom John Brown, the martyr of Virginia, was by far the chief. The 
slave power poured in their men; but, as in all the subsequent contests, 
so then, they could not equal the friends of freedom in numbers. The 
aid of the national government, and their savagery, made up for their 
lack of numbers. The administration constantly favored their cause, 
decided their minority constitution, which established slavery, alone 
authentic, and endeavored to force her admission into Congress on that 
basis. This was fiercely opposed, and by the vigor and daring of the anti- 
slavery leaders, was successfully resisted. May 19, 1856, Charles Sum- 
ner, Senator from Massachusetts, delivered a masterly oration upon the 
course of the government and the slave power. This freedom of speech, 
it was felt, was harming the cause of the slaveholders. He must be 
punished, and it suppressed. So with the knowledge and in the presence 
of their leader, Senator Douglas, who was then expecting the nomina- 
tion to the Presidency, on May 22 an assault was made on Mr. Sum- 
ner, as he sat at his desk, writing, by Preston C. Brooks, a member of 
the House of Eepresentatives from South Carolina. About fifteen very 
severe blows were inflicted on his head. He pulled up his seat in his 
endeavors to escape his would-be assassin. He was nearly killed, and 
for several years was unable to do any public service. 

The country instinctively felt that this was a new step in the march 
of the iniquity. It had defrauded the Territories of their rights. It 
now sought to extinguish all State equality. Eor if freedom of debate 
in Congress was suppressed, all State rights were practically annihi- 
lated. Only as the slave power allowed would any State presume to 
act. The "United States" ceased to be, and an oligarchy became the 



NOTES. 633 

sole sovereign of the country. The following resolution, adopted at 
Faneuil Hall, is an example of that sentiment : — 

Resolved, That in this outrage we see new encroachments upon Freedom, new 
violations of State rights; that the attack is to be rebuked, not only as a cowardly- 
assault upon a defenseless man, but as a crime against the right of Free Speech 
and the dignity of a Free State. 

The Massachusetts legislature also declared, in its resolves, that it 
was " a ruthless attack upon the liberty of speech, and an indignity to 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." She also demanded for her 
Representatives in Congress freedom of speech, and announced her de- 
termination to sustain them " in the rights of American citizens." 

Thus the blows upon Sumner were the natural precursor of the shot 
at Sumter. Both were against the Nation and Humanity. Both came 
from Disunion and Slavery. 

The act made the presidential campaign, then beginning, yet more 
fierce, and greatly increased the anti-slavery vote. 

The discourse on this subject was published in " The Westfield News- 
letter," the newspaper of the town where it was preached, at the request 
of a number of leading citizens. It is with pleasure that their note 
of invitation is here reprinted, both as a memorial of old times and old 
friends, of whom the greater part continue to this present, but some are 
fallen asleep, and also as a proof that its words were only levelled up, 
if even that were possible, to the hight of the hour. These gentlemen 
of business, social and religious standing, by their indorsement, show 
how deep and wide the tide of feeling flowed. 

Westfield, June 11, 1856. 
To Rev. Mr. Haven. 

We, the undersigned, having listened with the deepest interest to your discourse 
of last Sabbath afternoon, and feeling that such wholesome truths ought, at the 
present juncture, to have a widespread circulation, would respectfully request the 
same to be published. 

In making this request, we feel we are but expressing the unanimous sentiment 
of the large audience convened on that occasion. 

H. Harrison, Elijah Porter, 

Samuel Dow, T. P. Collins, 

John Kneil, Ralph Lay, 

George S. Savage, P. N. Weston, 
D. N. Day. Albert A. Ray, 

B. R. Lewis, E. A. Ray, 

M. D. Moore, A. P. Rand. 

Messrs. Harrison, Dow, Kneil, and others. 

Gentlemen : Agreeably to your request, I submit the remarks made last Sabbath 
afternoon to your disposal, hoping that they may aid, though slightly, to a right 
perception of the sin and peril of our beloved nation, and to the instant and earnest 
employment of all the means approved by our Creator for our present and perpetual 
salvation. Very truly yours, 

Westfield, June 11, 1866. G. Haven. 



634 NOTES. 



III. 

Slavery's Last Triumph. — (Page 87.) 

The fiercest political battle that till then had been fought in America, 
had resulted in the defeat of John C. Fremont, the candidate of the 
anti-slavery forces, first known as the Republican party in this cam- 
paign, and the election of James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. It was a 
victory that ruined the victors. The strength of the friends of freedom 
was made known. Their party had grown from 157,123 in the last pres- 
idential election, to 1,340,514. They had elected a Congress, which 
was so largely impregnated with the free sentiments, that it restrained 
the Executive from his full and fell purposes. The discourse was there- 
fore a declaration of the intent and scope of the triumphant party; a 
declaration that was substantially fulfilled in all the leading efforts of 
the administration in respect to Kansas, Cuba, the Dred Scott decision, 
which deprived every man of color of every constitutional protection, 
and the decision from the same court prepared, but not declared, that 
reopened the slave traffic in every free State. Lincoln's election alone 
prevented that declaration. During its existence, and with its conni- 
vance, the foreign or African slave trade was reopened, and invasions 
of Mexico and Central America were carried out ; while its bequest of 
the most terrible civil war in history, far surpassed and more than an- 
swered all the statements of its intent and effort, and showed that had 
not our people been willing to die by the hundreds of thousands, this 
roll of lamentations, mourning, and woe would have been more than 
fulfilled. 



IV. 

"It will be demanded of us, drop for drop, by the God of 
justice." — (Page 112.) 

Eight years afterward, President Lincoln, in his last inaugural, thus 
spoke : — 

Yet if God wills that the war continue until all the wealth piled by the bond- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 



NOTES. 635 



V. 

Canaan's curse nothing to do with the African and his 
Slavery. — (Page 124.) 

The position was long held by abolitionists, that the curse upon Ca- 
naan was a prophecy of his political subjugation to the children of 
Israel, and that he was not the father of the African race, and his curse 
had given no authority for African slavery. This was opposed with in- 
tense vigor by the Southern pulpit and its Northern sympathizers. Even 
so late as 1869, a lecturer could make " cursed be Canaan" a title for a 
witty satire against slavery and caste. But how false it was, and how 
thoroughly exploded, may be seen from the following extract from " The 
Christian Advocate " of January, 1869, published at Nashville, the official 
organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Its learned editor, 
Rev. Dr. Summers, thus confesses the wrongfulness of that famous plea 
for American slavery : — 

The descendants of Ham's fourth son, Canaan, were exclusively involved in 
Noah's malediction; but they were not negroes, nor, so far as appears, any darker 
in their hue than the Jews, to whom, as Shemites, they were brought into servi- 
tude, as they were afterwards to the Greeks and Romans, the descendants of 
Japheth. « 

We do not doubt that the black races of Africa, including all the negroes, de- 
scended from Cush and Phut, two of the sons of Ham, with perhaps a little inter- 
mingling from the descendants of Mizraim, another of his sons, who settled in 
Egypt. 

VI. 

"One hale the family the property of the other." — (Page 132.) 

A clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. J. D. Long, 
when travelling a circuit in Maryland, stopped at the house of one of 
his congregation. After dinner they went to walk. 

" Did you notice anything peculiar about my family? " said his host. 

" Nothing especial," was the reply. 

" Did you not see the girls that waited on the table ? " 

" I noticed that there were some." 

" Those girls are my daughters, the children of my first wife, who 
was my slave. I lived happily with her, and as honorably as the State 
would allow. When she died, I married my present wife, a white lady, 
whose daughters sat at the table. The older sisters are the slaves of 
the younger." 

"The elder shall serve the younger" was strangely fulfilled in this 
instance. It was one of a myriad of examples of the mixed condition 
of slaveholding families. 



636 NOTES. 

VII. 

The Movement at Harper's Terry. — (Page 153.) 

The seizure of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry was made on the night 
of October 17th, 1859. It was arranged for the 24th; but Captain 
Brown suspected a traitor in his band, and struck earlier to escape his 
treachery. The consequence was, that many of his supporters, both 
from the North and among the slaves, were not ready, and his plans 
thus failed of connection and of success. 

He intended to make his rendezvous in the hills, but delayed, fatally 
for himself, all the forenoon in the arsenal which he occupied. He had 
twenty -two associates, sixteen whites and six colored. When a workman 
asked the guard of the arsenal by what authority he had taken possession 
of public property, he replied, "By the authority of Almighty God." 

The excitement of the nation was wonderful. No event of the war 
produced such a startling effect on the public mind. Every one saw 
that it betokened a new phase of the growing struggle. Only one of 
the daily press, however, had the courage to avow the justice of the 
act. " The Evening Post," on the day of its announcement, stood by 
the principles involved in his action. Most Republican journals de- 
nounced him. The country has not yet fully discerned the value of this 
courageous and Christian deed. A complete history of the event has 
not yet been written. It will be found to be far more wisely and skill- 
fully arranged than is even now allowed. It was undoubtedly the needed 
deed. The words and acts of the reform required this step. They had 
done their work. A blow against, it was the opening gun of the war. 
The soldiers soon detected its value, and the famous " John Brown 
song" became the most popular song of the army and the war. It 
was first sung within less than three months after the fall of Sumter, 
by the Massachusetts Twelfth, marching down State Street, under 
the command of Colonel Fletcher Webster, son of Daniel Webster. 
Captain Brown will undoubtedly stand forth as the John Huss of this 
reform, one the most exalted of its many martyrs in the love and 
honor of future generations. 

VIII. 

Bunker's Hill and Harper's Ferry. — (Page 195.) 

The analogy between these two historic events has been suggested by 
several speakers and writers. It has not been as- carefully elaborated 
as it deserves to be, and will be by future historians. It may not be 






NOTES. 637 

amiss to state a few of the points of resemblance they will detect, both 
in respect to the enterprises themselves, and their real leaders. 

They are not unlike in rashness, viewed in the light of cool, sagacious 
generalship. Consider the former. Fifteen hundred untrained soldiers, 
with only four rounds apiece of cartridge and ball, planted themselves 
behind a mere bank of turf and sticks, thrown up in less than twelve 
hours, within a few rods of a ship channel, where the enemy's men-of- 
war lay, and whence they could rake them on three sides, and cut oif 
their retreat on the fourth. Consider, further, that a great city was less 
than a mile distant, full of ammunition and thoroughly trained soldiers, 
and its nearest eminence, in hight and distance, commanded their site 
as perfectly as though it had been perched over their heads but a rood 
off. Is there greater military wisdom in putting such a handful of raw 
militia into such a trap, than Captain Brown showed in his operations ? 
Wellington nor Washington would have never undertaken the former 
any sooner than the latter. 

If we look at each of them, as they appeared to the hopes or even the 
dreams of Warren and of Brown, we shall find them not dissimilar. No 
historian ever has clearly set forth the immediate practical good that 
the encampment on Bunker's Hill was intended or desired to effect : 
we doubt if they ever will. It could not have been dreamed for a 
moment, that their position could be retained for any length of time. 
Without shelter, without rocky ramparts, or means to erect them, with- 
out ammunition or cannon, or provision, shut off from all communica- 
tion from the main army as completely as if in a besieged fortress, they 
could not have hoped for anything but a bloody battle, fruitless in its 
immediate results even if successful, or a final submission of the whole 
force by the slow, but, in this case, most certain process of siege. Had 
not the British been rash with rage and pride, they could have had the 
whole fifteen hundred in their hands in less than a week without the 
loss of a man, as easily as the Virginians could have starved Captain 
Brown into surrender, had they, too, had the grace of patience. It 
may be said the Americans made a blunder, and located themselves 
nearer Boston, and on a lower hill, than they intended. So the leader 
of the Harper's Ferry enterprise said he made a blunder, and did not 
follow any of his plans in entering the arsenal. History will give them 
both the benefits of their claim, if she gives either. What then? The 
hill they intended to occupy is just as completely shut off from the camp 
as the one they fortified. It has only one advantage over the latter. 
This one is overtopped by Copp's Hill in Boston, that one, not. It is, 
however, within reach of its fire, as well as that of the fleet. The 
mountains on which Brown said he meant to establish himself, are not 
subject to like objection. The enterprise of Putnam, Prescott, and War- 
ren has not any such claim to real necessity as must be allowed to the 



638 NOTES. 

fight at Lexington and the fortification of Dorchester Hights. It was a 
trial battle. It would have always been branded as criminally foolish, 
but for the higher than strategetical, or so called practical reasons, which 
incited it, and especially but for the wonderful fruits it brought forth in 
the hearts of friends and foes. Will not the future historian of the great 
conflict of slavery and freedom find like analogies in the events of Har- 
per's Ferry ? In one respect we pray and believe they will totally differ. 
The former was the prelude of a long and cruel civil war. The latter, 
we hope, will prove to be the only bloody interruption to the peaceable 
progress of this cause. It will certainly have this relation, if the slave 
masters learn more wisdom from this event than our British masters did 
from Bunker's Hill.* 

We cannot fail to notice the remarkable resemblance of the real leaders 
of these enterprises, both in respect to their own temperament, as well 
as in their relation to their associates in the general movement. Warren 
differed as much from the other great leaders in the cause of liberty 
then, as John Brown did from those of to-day. His voice was fierce for 
war long before the others considered the argument of peace exhausted. 
His deeds were like his words. On the Lexington day, he was fighting 
in the ranks, while Hancock and Samuel Adams, equally great patriots, 
and esteemed by the king far more dangerous rebels, felt it their duty 
to seek safety in flight. His rash courage almost sealed his fate that 
day. For at West Cambridge a ball passed so near his head as to carry 
away the pin that fastened his earlock. Had he been captured at Bun- 
ker's Hill, as he undoubtedly would have been but for the fortunate 
stab of a bayonet, he would most certainly have been hung within a 
month on Boston Common, by the Governor of Massachusetts, for 
"murder, treason, and inciting to insurrection." 

There are only two points of difference between these transactions. 
The first, that those who fought were, in the one case, themselves the 
victims of the oppression, in the other, chiefly sympathizers with these 
victims. This is not quite true, though constantly asserted. For col- 
ored men, free and slave, were engaged at Harper's Ferry. Some were 
slain, some escaped, some were captured and hung. It was planned 
and perfected, theoretically, among the fugitives of Canada. Colonel 
Washington's favorite slave was among the slain, and no one knows, no 
one can know, till slavery is abolished, how great an army was pledged 
to meet at the rendezvous in the mountains. 

The second point of difference is, that much legislative and military 
preparation preceded the former encounter, none the latter. It will be 
noticed, in connection with this fact, that the ruling government of Mas- 
sachusetts had allowed, for many years, mass meetings, congresses, peti- 

* This note is printed as it was published in December, 1860. The analogy has 
grown more complete with the events that have since occurred. 



NOTES. 639 

tions of its subjects, the collection of military stores, and, at last, permit- 
ted fourteen thousand of these rebels to be encamped under arms within 
three miles of its Capitol. Suppose Virginia had granted its subjects 
such privileges, would they not have developed civil and military lead- 
ers, and executed enterprises of great pith and moment, without the aid 
of a foreign arm? Let us reflect that history, which is the voice of 
humanity, never takes into account, in its ultimate and irreversible judg- 
ment, immediate success or failure. The final cause rules here as every- 
where. Warren and Bunker's Hill are still, and ever will be, the most 
thrilling names of the Revolutionary struggle. Those to whose liberty 
they are dedicated, have compelled all nations to do them reverence, 
by their own unceasing, enthusiastic devotion. So the like, yet far 
greater admiration of the Afric-American race, when they shall have 
achieved their freedom, will compel all the world to revere the names 
of John Brown and Harper's Ferry. Their representative shall yet 
stand with the descendant of John Brown and the successor of Governor 
Wise, in mutual amity and grateful reverence before a commemorative 
monument at Harper's Ferry, as the descendants of George the Third * 
and Joseph Warren lately stood with the representative of emancipated 
Massachusetts, cordial and reverent, before the sacred memorials of 
Bunker's Hill. 

IX. 

"The open Slave Pen."— (Page 244.) 

The following lines from the late poems of John J. Piatt, are a fitting 
memorial of a vanished horror : — 

We start from sleep in morning's buoyant dawn, 
And find the horror which our sleep oppressed 

A vanished darkness, in the daylight gone — 
The nightmare's burden leaves the stifled breast. 

Yet still a presence moves about the brain, 

Some frightful shadow lost in hazy light; 
And in the noonday highway comes again, 

The loathsome phantom of the breathless night. 

So, while before these hateful doors I stand, 
I feel the bordering darkness which is past, 

* The Prince of Wales and the President of the Bunker Hill Monument Associa- 
tion, Hon. George Washington Warren. What connection of names and men could 
be more significant ? Governor Wise has since approved the abolition of slavery. 
The Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, Virginia, will as surely crown that 
spot with its glorious memories. 



640 NOTES. 

Or passing surely from the awakened land; 
The nightmare clutches me and holds me fast. 

Back from the years that seem so long ago, 
Return the dark processions which have been ; 

Lifting again lost manacles of woe, 

They enter here — they vanish, going in. 

Hark to the smothered murmur of a race 

Within these walls, — its helpless wail and moan, — 

Which, for the ancient shadow on its face, 

Called not the morning's new-horn light its own! 

Imprisoned here, what unforgotten cries 

Of hopeless torture, and what sights of woe, 

From cotton field and rice plantation rise ! — 

These walls have heard, and seen, and witness show. 

The human drove, the human driver, see ! 

Hark, the dread blood-hound in the swamp at bay ! 
The whipping-post reechoes- agony; 

The slave mart blackens all the shameful day. 

The wife and husband, see, asunder thrust ! 

The mother dragged from her far children's wail ! 
The maiden torn from love and given to lust — 

The Human Family in a bill of sale. 

All sounds reecho, all sights reappear; 

(0 blindness, deafness ! that ye cannot be !) 
All sounds of woe that have been heard, I hear ! 

All sights of shame that have been seen, I see ! 

sounds, be still ! O visions, leave the day ! 

What thunder trembled on the sultry air ? 
What lightnings went upon their breathless way? 

Behold the stricken gates of old despair ! 

The writing on these barbarous walls was plain ; 

The curse has fallen none would understand ; 
God's deluge ere another happier rain ; 

His plow of fire before the reaper's land ! 

The awful nightmare slips into its night, 

With cannon-flash and noise of hurrying shell. 

O prisons, open for returning light ! 
The sun is in the world, and all is well. 



NOTES. 641 



First Abolition Proclamation. — (Page 269.) 

The first proclamation that declared for the abolition of slavery, was 
read in Congress, Friday, March 6, 1862. In it Mr. Lincoln proposed 
the following joint resolution : 

Resolved, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may- 
adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be 
used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public 
and private, produced by such a change of system. 

He argued that this would " initiate emancipation," and prevent the 
border States from going with the Confederacy in case the government 
should be forced to acknowledge the independence of one part of the 
disaffected region. 

Congress and the country recognized the importance of the step. The 
telegraph declared "the President's Message excited deep interest in 
the House to-day. It forms the theme of earnest conversation." "The 
Tribune," of March 8, said, "It is one of those few great scriptures 
that live in history, and mark an epoch in the lives of nations and races. 
The first era of the supremacy of the rights of man in this country 
dates from the Declaration of Independence ; the second began on the 
6th of March, 1862, Avith the Emancipation Message of President Lin- 
coln." It was an unnoticed coincidence, that Webster's- speech, sur- 
rendering himself, and so far as he could, his party and State and section, 
to slavery, was pronounced on the same day that this message was read, 
March 7th. Twelve years to a day had reversed completely that fatal 
descent of the North, and raised the nation to its true hight. Thence- 
forward to the next and bolder step, universal and unconditional eman- 
cipation, was easy and inevitable. 



XI. 

Letter to the London Watchman. — (Page 291.) 

The circumstances attending the writing of this letter ought to ac- 
company its publication in this form, as a defence for what might seem 
to some an inappropriate intrusion of American ideas into a British 
journal. Having a letter of introduction from Eev. Dr., now Bishop 
Thomson, to the late and lamented Rev. J. A. Biggs, then editor in 
chief of the Watchman, on calling upon him, a conversation ensued on 
American affairs. It was remarked that the British public seemed but 
little conversant with the questions involved in this controversy, and 
41 



642 NOTES. 

the position of the American government. The editor requested a com- 
munication setting forth these points. It was suggested that a full state- 
ment would not be acceptable to his readers. The reply was, that free 
speech was always allowed. In Paris, a few weeks after, on the Fourth 
of July, the letter was written. The proofs were sent to Paris, with a 
note, asking if we wished it to publish treason, and if our American 
editors would allow articles against a Republican form of government 
to appear in their journals. It was replied that it "was asked to 
publish nothing. Free speech was declared to be the law of all British 
journalism. Any American editor would admit a defence of British 
ideas, monarchy included, in his journal. The editor ha,d full liberty 
to accept or reject the article." 

It was accepted, and one half published, [to the bottom of page 303]. 
That portion caused so much excitement that a committee was called 
of the managers, and the balance read, and forbidden to be published, 
although it was already in type. The letter, as thus prepared and 
printed, and half published, is here presented. Its only objection, as 
the editor himself declared in a conversation afterward, was its state- 
ment of the real cause of the anti-American sentiment in England. 
He agreed as to the coming of democracy there, and said that " if they 
had a king like George IV., they would be a republic in ten years." He 
has since died; a true Christian gentleman, whose heart was in sym- 
pathy with our ideas no less than with our struggle. 

XII. 

The Ultimate Oneness of Mankind. — (Page 350.) 

The vision of saints and poets, the declarations of prophecy, and the 
necessary triumph of Christianity, in bringing all the world to one lan- 
guage and one heart, is well set forth in "Yesterday, To-day, and For- 
ever," in the Millennial Year. The poet thus describes the unity of 
language : — 

Babel's confusion was unlearned. And one 

Melodious language, wherein every thought 

Found utterance, overspread the circling globe, 

A language worthy of the sons of God. 

XIII. 

The March of the Dark Brigade. — (Page 369.) 

The following editorial, from " The Independent" of that date, illus- 
trates the feelings which the event excited. 

"It is not often 'that the hub of the universe' shakes on its axle. 



NOTES. 643 

But last Thursday it fell from its steadfastness. It was the Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts regiment which cast the shadow of its coming on our 
last week's columns, that stormed and took the city. 

a w e gather from various sources the incidents of the march, and sub- 
mit to our readers the raw materials for the future poets and historians. 
The cars from the neighboring cities came in crowded, as at the Prince 
of Wales' reception. Extremes meet. The heir of the proudest throne 
and the most despised of mankind created like furore. The streets 
were thronged. Nature smiled propitious. So did the citizens. 

" About ten o'clock the cars landed the regiment, and the line of 
march was taken up through the principal streets. Gilmore's band led 
the column. A colored band that did not play, and a colored drum 
corps that did, and well, followed. Then came the strange spectacle — 
a thousand black forms and faces. Some expressions looked hard, and 
almost brutal, as if they had just emerged from their long prison-house, 
and had only two ideas — liberty and vengeance. Others, and most, 
were refined and thoughtful, and full of high inspiration. 

"They sweep along from curbstone to curbstone, with even, steady 
tramp, their knapsacks and coats piled upon their shoulders, their 
guns erect against them. Nemesis is marching to South Carolina. Not 
shod with wool, as Horace talks about. The wool was on her head — 
and will be a sacred fillet when those who wear it shall be sacrificed 
upon the altar of their country's salvation. No doubt the slaveholders 
in Richmond and Charleston heard the solid tread. 

" They came to the State House. The Governor, Senator Wilson, 
Adjutant-General Schouler, and other dignitaries, were received into 
the opened lines, and the march was continued down Beacon Street. 
The creme de la crtme crowded the aristocratic windows. Handker- 
chiefs fluttered, and loud cheers rent the air. In one of the most aris- 
tocratic houses, the residence of the colonel, colored ladies and white 
stood in the parlor windows. 

" How those soldiers must have felt at such an ovation-! Did they 
remember their life-long degradation? Did they remember anything 
else? Many had just been slaves. Their backs were hardly healed of 
the scourge. What contrasts in their lives ! No novelist has dreamed 
of such. 

" The Common was crowded. The Governor and his staff marched 
around the straight line of battle. Never did his Excellency seem to feel 
and look so excellent. 

" Then the troops defiled before him in company line, and with far 
better precision than most new regiments and many old ones exhibit. 
Thence they march out of the Common, down Tremont Street, down 
Court Street, by the Court-House, chained hardly a decade ago to 
save Slavery and the Union. Thence down State Street, trampling on 



644 NOTES. 

the very pavements over which Sims and Burns marched to their fate, 
encompassed by soldiers of the United States. 

"'Their sisters, sweethearts, and wives,' — a familiar quotation in 
the notices of previous departing regiments, but looking a little odd 
in this new place, — ran along beside 'the boys,' giving their parting 
benedictions of smiles and tears, telling them to be brave, and to show 
their blood ! The crowds cheer even The Courier office — the soldiers 
sing the John Brown song — the boat is reached, and the sensation is 
solidified into history of the United States. 

" All attempts to express the feelings of the crowd or the soldiers seem 
to read stale and flat. Yet, as Goldsmith said that the weakest jokes 
were received as wit by the circle of the happy Vicar, so these attempts 
were treated as successes by the happy crowd. One man said it was a 
verification of Shakespeare : — 

Know you not Pompey ? 
You have climbed up to the walls and battlements, 
To see Great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. 

" One fact should be chronicled. Their regimental banner, of superb 
white silk, had on one side the coat of arms of Massachusetts, and on 
the other a golden cross on a golden star, with In hoc signo vinces 
beneath. This is the first Christian banner that has gone into our war. 
By a strange, and yet not strange providence, God has made this de- 
spised race the bearers of His standard. They are thus the real leaders 
of the nation." 



XIY. 

The Pay of Colored Soldiers. — (Page 393.) 

Senator Wilson, in his history of anti-slavery measures in Congress, 
narrates the long struggle to put the laws right upon this subject. It 
lasted from January 8 to June 11, 1861: ; and even then had to be left 
optional with the Attorney General to say whether soldiers from the 
Slave States should be reckoned as entitled to the same pay as white 
soldiers. The President could not wait for this slow action of Congress, 
and under the pressure of General Grant, who wished to get his army 
into the best fighting trim before he started from Washington, he re- 
versed the previous decisions of his Attorney General, and pronounced 
all soldiers equal in their pay. Though this act of General Grant's was 
inspired by military judgment, it was none the less excellent in its nature 
and in its effects. 



NOTES. 645 

XV. 

Depreciation of Continental Currency. — (Page 414.) 

In the Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. IX., p. 11, are two or three 
items from General Muhlenberg's correspondence, which shows how 
worthless the Continental currency had become. 

On the 5th of January, 1780, he purchased a load of hay for £50 currency. 

March 10, 1780, he bought a horse for a journey from Pennsylvania to Virginia, 
which cost him £1025, or over $5009. The previous gold value of the horse was £15 
to £20, or less than $100. That journey of himself and family cost him £10,000, or 
$50,000. This was three years before the war closed. 

XVI. 

American Neutrality : its History and its Effects. — (Page 450.) 

These facts will show how baneful has been the sway of this doctrine 
in our councils, both upon our foreign and domestic relations, and upon 
the liberty of the world. 

The French Revolution began in 1789. The Republic was established 
in 1793. Every American, every European saw that both the Revolution 
and the Republic sprang from our loins. It was our first born among 
the nations — the beginning of our strength. It had consummated itself 
in the execution of the king; a deed as necessary for their salvation as it 
would have been for our fathers to have expelled the British sovereign 
from our soil, and to have hung him had he persisted in demanding 
his rights as separate from those of the people. Their execution of 
Louis XVI. is as justifiable as that of Charles I. 

They established a government based on the broadest principles of 
democracy. The event was hailed with enthusiasm in every part of the 
country. In Boston, an ox roasted whole, was carried through the city 
and served up on State Street. Sixteen hundred loaves of bread were 
distributed, and the fear of the Maine Law being then, unfortunately, 
unknown — two hogsheads of punch. Each child of the public schools 
received a cake marked " Liberty and Equality." Balloons were sent up, 
bonfires blazed, the State House was illuminated, and a public dinner at 
Eaneuil Hall was presided over by Lieutenant Governor Samuel Adams, 
the father of the Revolution. Governor Mifflin presided at a like jubilee 
in Philadelphia. Charleston was ablaze with the same enthusiasm. Eor . 
once, and for the only time till now, Massachusetts and South Carolina 
struck hands in favor of universal liberty. They are coming together 
again ! 

Then came the practical test of their zeal. The Republic was instant- 



646 NOTES. 

ly met with an offensive alliance of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, 
Sardinia, and New Netherlands. They declared war against it. They 
mustered their forces for its subjugation. The terrific cloud of Ameri- 
can independence and equality had moved across the seas, had broken 
over their heads in the deluge of France. If they should remain quiet, it 
would speedily drown their thrones in its mighty floods. They take 
arms against the sea of troubles. France sees her peril, and well she 
may. A mass of emancipated serfs, led by men who had been equally 
despised and but little more privileged than themselves, — what can they 
do against the European world ? They look to America, their nearest 
friend', their only parent. Citizen Genet is sent as embassador by the 
Girondist government, as noble and pure a body of rulers as ever failed 
or triumphed in any land. Our first Congress that passed the Declara- 
tion, our last that has just confirmed it by its corresponding acts, were 
not more unselfish, broad-minded, sagacious, and honest than the govern- 
ment that executed Louis and established the French Kepublic. 

Genet landed at Charleston, and was welcomed with great rejoicings. 
His entrance into Philadelphia was an ovation. His mission was public- 
ly proclaimed and heartily indorsed. He said that his object was " to 
draw the United States, as far as possible, into making common cause with 
France." His government " desired to effect a true family compact on a 
liberal and fraternal basis, on which to raise up the commercial and politi- 
cal systems of two peoples, all whose interests were confounded." Thus 
did she look to us, her mother, in the hour of her first trial. She hastened 
to us, she begged, she entreated us to aid her in maintaining her lib- 
erties. 

But while the people were willing, another spirit ruled the government. 
It hastened, with equal zeal and alacrity, to identify itself with the enemies 
both of the country and its principles. The doctrine of Neutrality was 
then born into the political world — a cup that has since been faithfully 
commended to our unwilling lips, by the power that then won the chief- 
est benefit from its creation. How perfectly the type and antitype 
agree. England's course toward ns is exactly copied after that which we 
pursued against the French Republic. As soon as war was proclaimed 
Washington called his cabinet together. Hamilton, an aristocrat, and 
almost monarchist, proposed to them, in writing, certain questions, all 
favoring the doctrine of neutrality, none of fraternity. He sought to 
commit them to his side before they had assembled. Jefferson opposed 
it, or sought for such a moderate and transient expression of it as he 
hoped might be carried in the cabinet, and knew that the winds of popu- 
lar feeling and the force of events would -soon sweep away. Hamilton 
prevailed, and Washington issued his proclamation, April 22, 1793, in 
less than a fortnight after the news reached him of the declaration of 
war by the allies, and while the embassador of the new republic was 



NOTES. 647 

known to be on his way to the capital. How strikingly does the Queen's 
proclamation, in less than a fortnight after the news of the fall of Sumter 
reaches England, and while our embassador is on his way thither, pho- 
tograph our own conduct, and hoist us with our own petard. 

Citizen Genet was coldly received by the President. In the pressure 
of his necessities, and relying on the enthusiasm of the people to protect 
him against the decree of their government, he presumed to issue com- 
missions and make spoliations of British commerce in our waters. This 
brought him into conflict with our authorities and damaged his position, 
though not enough to lose him the moral and hearty support of the peo- 
ple. The country was alive with excitement. The word Democrat was 
imported from Trance, and adopted by its sympathizers. Jefferson allied 
himself so strongly with tbeir cause that he was compelled to leave the 
cabinet. Madison was alike its earnest and active friend. Monroe had 
pledged his country to the Republic in Paris, and had been recalled by 
the government for his ardor for liberty, only to be hailed everywhere by 
the people. The next Congress, the first of the second administration, 
was carried against the administration and neutrality. Frederick Muh- 
lenberg, of Pennsylvania, was elected speaker on this issue. Albert 
Gallatin was chosen senator from Pennsylvania on the same question. 
Bache, Eranklin's grandson, and the inheritor of his principles, was its 
editorial champion. There never was a movement, in our political his- 
tory, better officered, more popular, or more just, and yet it failed. 
Selfishness, timidity, greed of wealth, opportunities, which increased 
vastly with the prospective ruin of the English carrying trade, through 
French privateers — these moved us from the principles of brotherhood 
and liberty by which we had become a nation. We not only refused to 
do to others as we would that they should do to us ; we refused to do 
as they had done to us. We had won our liberty solely though the help 
of France. Now she may groan and die, while we look out for 
ourselves. 

The immaturity of our institutions, and their experimental character, 
were pleaded as an excuse for our course. But we find as the result, 
what we knew in our hearts at the beginning, that the only way for a 
nation, as for an individual, to maintain their rectitude, is to work right- 
eousness. He who saves his life shall lose it. We lost ours at the very 
moment we sought thus sinfully and selfishly to save it. Most honor- 
able as were the motives of Washington, his judgment failed him. The 
enthusiasm of youth yielded to the fears of age. He shrank from war, as 
well he should ; but he also shrank from confidence in the cause he had 
so greatly assisted in establishing, and whose preservation might demand 
war. He distrusted the people. He revealed his real feelings when he 
told Jefferson that an American monarchy " was not what he was afraid 
of: his fears were from another quarter; that there was more danger 



648 NOTES. 

of anarchy being introduced." * The only right way to repress both 
dangerous tendencies was to keep the Eepublic alive with its own spirit ; 
to make it zealous for its radical ideas, and faithfully support them 
wherever they were in peril. 

This fearful spirit possessed the whole of the second administration of 
"Washington, and is the controlling animus of his most famous paper — 
the Farewell Address. In fact, the chief cause and topic of that docu- 
ment are not the perils of disunion at home, but of union abroad. Its 
strongest and most animated sentences are directed against this duty. 
Its sentences so cold, and unworthy of the great soul that penned them, 
are the very gospel of selfishness. How they contrast with the gospel of 
humanity which Jefferson wrote, and Congress proclaimed, not twenty 
years before, and of which Washington had been the military executor. 
A few extracts will confirm our position. Far below the highest states- 
manship is this statement of the relation of great powers to each other. 

" The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in 
extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political 
connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, 
let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let them stop." 

For such an embargo on all intercourse but that of a mercenary char- 
acter, he gives this reason : — 

" Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a 
very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent con- 
troversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. 
Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by 
artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary 
combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities." 

And yet, not long before, Merlin de Douay, the president of the con- 
vention, which had overthrown Eobespierre, and wiped out the blood 
stains of his administration, in welcoming Monroe as Washington's 
embassador, had used these words : — 

" The French people have not forgotten that it is to the American 
people that they owe their initiation into the cause of liberty. It was in 
admiring the sublime insurrection of the American people against Britain, 
once haughty, now so humble, it was in themselves taking arms to 
second your courageous efforts, and in cementing your independence by 
the blood of our brave warriors, that the French people learned in their 
turn to break the scepter of tyranny, and to elevate the statue of liberty 
on the wreck of a throne supported during fourteen centuries only by 
crimes and corruption." 

Does this sound as if "Europe had a set of primary interests, which to 
us have none or a very remote interest " ? Were controversies raging on 

* Irving's AVasliington, V. p. 113. 



NOTES. 649 

such a field foreign to our concerns ? Alas, Great Master, thy noble 
heart forgot its inspirations in its fears. In truth, the only political 
activity in all Europe, making her quake and rend under its mighty tread, 
was the gathering and wrestling of armies, bearing on their several ban- 
ners each but one sentence, learned in our school alone — " The Rights 
of Kings," " the Rights of Man." The first born child of America was 
struggling in its cradle with the crowned hydras of tyranny ; yet its 
mother refuses to hear and to help her throttled babe — and that, under 
the plea that these " controversies are foreign to her concerns." 

There is much more in like vein. The Atlantic is spoken of as 
separating us. It was forgotten that the Atlantic did not separate us 
from our enemy and our allies in the great fight of the Revolution ; and 
that Franklin's diplomacy at Paris, as much if not more than the sword 
of Washington, had achieved our liberties. Yet with these clearest of 
facts before him, he says, — 

" Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue 
a different course [than to intervene.] 

" Why," he exclaims, " forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situa- 
tion ? Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground ? Why by inter- 
weaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace 
and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, 
humor, or caprice ? It is our true policy to steer clear of all permanent 
alliances with any portion of the Avorld." 

Is not this the gospel of selfishness ? Is this the true and eternal 
principle of nationality? Is this rightfully reading our own history? 
Had Holland, and Spain, and Russia, and France so treated us, he 
would long before have been hung as a rebel, or have been a fugitive 
and vagabond on the earth, while the people over whom he ruled would 
still have been "born colonists, born slaves." 

The farther history of those times is not without its painfully ap- 
propriate lessons. Hamilton, sought in the spirit and intent of the 
neutrality act, as England lias, in our late war, to abrogate the force of 
the treaties we had made with France, and on substantially the same 
basis : — 

"Because she had changed her government she could not hold us to 
the responsibility to treaties made with a view to a totally different state 
of things, and which, if carried out, might impose obligations on us 
and expose us to dangers never dreamed of when the treaties were 
made." * 

Again, the French Republic and the American began to quarrel on the 
same grounds that we have fallen apart from England. They seized our 
ships carrying contrabrand of war to their enemies. We claimed that 

* Hildreth's History, IV. p. 414. 



650 NOTES. 

free ships made free goods. They acknowledged the principle, but 
plead necessity, as Mr. Seward said we might have done in the Trent 
affair. We glowered, talked big, and insultingly demanded, as England 
has of us, retraction under threat of war. It was precisely what John 
Bright calls England's course with us, " a cold neutrality." Cast off by 
us, who should have fraternized with her, she turned upon us in hate 
and scorn, just as we have upon England. She defied us, and trampling 
over her foes without our aid, despised us and proceeded to yet greater 
lengths of impudent contempt for our claims. Our neutrality was push- 
ing us into a war with our only child, our best and only friend. Wash- 
ington's declaration that " our detached and distant situation" saved us 
from all need of exercising the feelings of brotherhood and delivered 
us from the toils of European ambition, interest, and caprice, had hardly 
been uttered and he retired to his longed-for retreat, before he was sum- 
moned forth to lead our armies against our ally, who had been made our 
enemy by the principles and conduct that had animated that address. 
The European complications of France alone prevented the horrid sight 
of the only two republics in the world, neither of them ten years old, and 
separated by a vast and stormy ocean, springing at each others throats 
in mutual ferocity. How would the monarchies of Europe have rejoiced 
at that spectacle ! Why did they not suspend their assaults upon Erance 
and allow Washington and Lafayette to thus throttle and destroy each 
other? Thank God, those powers by the swiftness of their own rancor- 
ous hatred prevented that catastrophe. 

Meantime, Massachusetts had been bribed into silence by giving her 
son the Presidency, and Samuel Adams, closed the last of her truly 
democratic rulers, not to be begun again till more than half a century 
had rolled away. Governor Andrew was his first political son that reigned 
his stead. Hers was a wilderness wandering of more than forty years. 

When the Democrats came into power, the Erench Republic had 
become far advanced towards a military despotism, constrained to it, by 
our refusal to aid her in preserving her liberties. The influences of the 
contrary doctrines of the late leaders, and especially our warlike threats 
and preparations, conspired with these tendencies to repress our enthu- 
siasm. Still Jefferson sympathized with Erance, reversed the current 
that set so strongly towards England, and brought on a war with that 
power, though too late to preserve the liberties of Europe. 

Munroe, his pupil, and warm friend of the Erench people, made his 
name immortal by declaring the doctrine that Republicanism should 
possess this continent : a step exactly opposite to that which Hamilton 
and Washington had taken, for it could be maintained only by permanent 
alliances with foreign powers and armed intervention in behalf of those 
foreign republics. It is a step too that may yet lead us, as we have lately 
seen, by the way of Mexico or some other invaded Republic, to the high 



NOTES. 651 

table land from which they had descended — the ground that our af- 
finities and duties are limited by no oceans, tongues, or creeds, but that 
where "Liberty dwells there is our country;" and where liberty is 
struggling against armed foes to maintain its hold, there should our eye 
melt in sympathy, our arm be revealed in salvation. 

All the results of this doctrine are not yet innumerated. By the usual 
movements of Providence, the evils it was hoped that it must have sup- 
pressed have flourished the more for its enactment, while the good it had 
hoped to win, turned to ashes on its lips. 

Democratic ideas troubled the aristocratic tastes of Hamilton, Adams, 
and Washington. Though not monarchists they were not Democrats. 
They distrusted the people. The Trench Republic was a perfect 
democracy. It struck at the vitals of their theories. They feared the 
rising waves. They sought to sweep out the Atlantic tide with their 
neutral broom. They were washed away by it. Hamilton and Adams 
lived to see their power utterly broken, and themselves and their ideas 
"in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." Washington, by a kind 
Providence, was relieved from the mournful spectacle. A dread of 
foreign Avar also troubled them. Our civil war with its streams of 
fraternal blood flowed from that unbrotherly timidity. 

Their third motive was the most honorable and most powerful, and 
most dearly has it been paid for. The country must be unified. All dis- 
tracting influences must be kept in abeyance. A new war with England 
in behalf of human rights will breed distractions at home. So thought 
these great and good men. Total mistake ! It would have condensed 
the people as never before and never since. From the hour that neu- 
trality was adopted disunion began. Charleston and Boston were 
enthusiastically united in the cause of Freedom and Republicanism in 
Europe. The young men who had been born and reared during the com- 
motions that had preceded and accomplished their independence, were, 
as the young devotees of a triumphant principle usually are, more earnest 
in their defense and propagation than the men who had established 
them. The young men of South Carolina, of Pennsylvania, of Virginia, 
of New England vied with each other in their laudations of their brethren 
in France. Munroe, Madison, Bache, Gallatin, Muhlenberg, Randolph, 
the men who soon obtained and for twenty years retained the leadership 
of the nation, represented these ideas. 

Had they been heard, the two great evils of disunion and slavery had 
never raised their snaky crests in the land, while the outside evil of 
dominant ntonarchism and hostility to our existence, would not have 
conspired with these inward foes to compass our ruin. He that saves his 
life shall lose it. 

Our present war is thus legitimately traced to that unmanly shrinking 
from a just war. The most tyrannic and abominable of aristocracies 



652 NOTES. 

ever known in the civilized or uncivilized world — an aristocracy based 
exclusively on the ownership of human flesh, sprung from this unjust 
fear and dislike of popular rights ; and the very Union, to save which all 
these sacrifices of principle and humanity were made, has been rent by 
the hands of its children, and has only been cemented by rivers of 
fraternal blood. 



XVII. 

Difference between American and British Neutrality. 
(Page 452.) 

In this analogy we would not be understood as granting to the British 
and French governments the protection of our course for their own mis- 
conduct. It shows that our error bred mischief to ourselves, not that 
it approves their crime. They appropriated our invention to their own 
use, and in directions that we never approved. Our neutrality was ex- 
ercised between actual powers, with whom we had treaties of alliance. 
We did not proclaim neutrality between the French throne and the 
Directory, — the throne was abolished, and a government unquestioned 
exercised sway throughout the whole territory, It was between this 
de facto, this recognized government, and foreign powers that we de- 
clined to interfere. This we had a perfectly legal right to do. We 
were under no obligation of international law to cast ourselves into the 
arena. Our complaint has been based wholly on moral grounds — the 
higher law of amity and justice, which demanded of us the help that we 
refused to give. 

Not so with British neutrality. That was illegally as well as unnat- 
urally exercised : that not merely refused to form compacts, it violated 
those already formed; that practically and intentionally interfered in 
favor of a rebellion in the interests of slavery against a power to which 
it was bound by solemn vows of treaty. Washington's proclamation 
did not invest the French Bepublic with nationality ; it had that already ; 
Victoria did the Confederate. Washington was scrupulous to regard 
British rights in our waters, to the extent of incurring the hostility of 
France and of his own people. Britain was as unscrupulous in its in- 
difference to American rights in British waters, although those rights 
were supported by treaty obligations as well as the cause they repre- 
sented. America proclaimed neutrality between recognized political 
powers ; Britain between a nation and a rebellious faction. America 
shunned alliance in favor of liberty and the rights of man ; Britain so- 
licited one in favor of the vilest despotism and the most hideous bondage 
the world has ever known. America adopted this perfectly legal course, 
to preserve her infantile democracy from the risk of annihilation on 



NOTES. 653 

European fields. Britain, her perfectly illegal one, that she might de- 
stroy this matured democracy in its last national stronghold, and insure, 
through the universal prevalence of Monorchism, the perpetuation of 
her own political institutions. 

"While, therefore, we are justly blamable, morally speaking, for the 
course we pursued, and have suffered greatly for that selfish fear ; while 
we have given our foes a word and an act that they needed, and have 
hastened to use against us, we are not responsible for their mode of 
using that word, which is, in every respect, novel, unjust, and in viola- 
tion of solemn obligations and international law. Mr. Bemis, in his able 
pamphlet, as well as Mr. Sumner and M. Gasparin, prove this conclu- 
sively. 

» 

XVIII. 
American Influence on the World. — (Page 460.) 

Very forcibly is this put by M. Montalembert, in his "L'Eglise Libre 
dans L'Etat Libre." "What confession can surpass this: "La Societe 
nouvelle, la democratie pour l'appeler par son nom, existe ; on peut 
meme dire qu'elle existe seule, tant ce qui n'est pas a peu de force et 
de vie. Dans une moitie'de l'Europe elle est deja. souveraine; elle le 
sera demain dans l'autre moitie." 

A new society is in existence, called democratic. One can hardly 
say that it exists merely, since it has no small strength or vitality. In 
one half of Europe it is already sovereign. It will be in the other half 
to-morrow. 

XIX. 

Jefferson Davis and Independence. — (Page 540.) 

The persistency with which Mr. Davis clung to the idea of indepen- 
dence was most remarkable. In the summer of 1864 he said to Messrs. 
Jaques and Gilmore, an informal commission who visited Richmond, 
"We are not fighting for slavery, we are fighting for independence; 
and that or extermination we will have " After the meeting of his 
commissioners, Messrs. Stevens, Hunter and Campbell, in February, 
1865, with Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln, at Fortress Monroe, he said, 
at a public meeting in Eichmond, " Sooner than we should ever be 
united again, I would be willing to yield up everything I have on earth, 
and if it were possible, would sacrifice my life a thousand times." 
Even at Danville, after he had fled from Eichmond, he issued a proc- 
lamation, in which he declared, "I will never consent to abandon to 
the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy. 



654 NOTES. 

No peace shall be made with the infamous invaders. If by stress 
of numbers we should be compelled to withdraw from her [Virginia's] 
limits, or those of any other border State, again and again will we re- 
turn, until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair 
his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved 
to be free." 

This was surely a strong will, surpassing even Pharaoh's. He yielded 
when his land was filled with his dead. Not so his antitype. Milton's 
imagination of another enemy of God and man is exactly fulfilled in 
the language of Jefferson Davis : — 

What though the field be lost ; 
All is not lost; the unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate ! 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what is else not to be overcome, 
That glory never shall His wrath or might 
Extort from me ! 



XX. 

Lincoln's First Speech. — (Page 553.) 

It is reported, on good authority, that when Mr. Lincoln was a candi- 
date for the legislature, at twenty-three years of age, after returning a 
victorious captain from the Black Hawk war, he made the following 
speech : — 

Fellow Citizens .- — You all know me. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. My 
speech will be short and sweet like an old woman's dance. I am in favor of a pro- 
tective tariff, internal improvement, and a uniform currency. If elected, I shall 
serve you as well as I can. If defeated, I shall try to feel not very bad about it. 

He failed in the district, though he received all the votes of his pre- 
cinct but nine. That speech prefigured his presidential career. Its 
three points were never so completely carried out by the national gov- 
ernment as in his administration ; the highest tariff, the greatest system 
of internal improvement, even to the taking possession and the running 
of many railroads, and a remarkably uniform currency, were its charac- 
teristics. The figure he uses is very humorous, and very like him. 



XXI. 

English and Irish Slave Trade. — (Page 607.) 

In Charles Kingsley's " Hereward, or the Last of the English," one 
of his characters, Martin Lightfoot, servant of Hereford, thus describes 
his parentage. Its veri-similitude to Southern slavery is striking : 



NOTES. 655 

I was born in Ireland, "VYaterford town. My mother was an English slave, one 
of those that Earl Godwin's wife, — not this one that is now, Gyda, [the famous 
Godivaof Coventry,] but the old one, King- Canute's sister, — used to sell out of 
England by the score, tied together witli ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. 
Her master, my father that was, [how perfectly Southern, this] got tired of her, 
and wanted to give her away to one of his kerns. She would not have that, so 
he hung her up, hand and foot, and beat her that she died. 



XXII. 

What was the Complexion of Christ ? — (Page 622.) 

"It still makes ks look on many a, human face with repulsion which is 
of the very complexion of the mother of our Lord, nay, of the Lord 
himself." 

It is impossible, of course, to declare certainly the complexion of our 
Savior. Our only guides are the people of the land where He lived. 
Some fancy He was a white man. But this could not be, except in vio- 
lation of every law of race. The natives of Palestine, Jews and Arabs, 
except the few of the former, imported from Germany, are of a brown 
complexion, almost the color of the bright brown mulatto. The women 
of Xazarefh, who still gather at the well of Annunciation, are of this 
dusky hue. The most beautiful lady we saw abroad, one of the love- 
liest we ever looked upon, was a brown Bethlehem Jewess, who passed 
us at the tomb of Eachel, on her donkey, with her brown, bearded, and 
turbaned lord and lover walking at her side, a perfect type of the Rachel 
and Jacob of four thousand years before. Just such complexions may 
one see to-day in those who were but lately Southern slaves. A very 
comely and attractive Bedouin, of a bright brown complexion, went up 
the pyramids with us and stood under the sphynx. When asked to come 
to America, he replied, "You will sell me." We had been selling mul- 
titudes of his complexion for generations. Dean Stanley describes 
Abraham as a Bedouin sheik. Except in the faith, he says, "In every 
aspect the likeness is complete between the Bedouin chief of the present 
day and the Bedouin chief who came from Chaldea nearly four thousand 
years ago." One of these "aspects" in complexion, and the Arab of 
Palestine and the Wilderness, is very like Erederic Douglass in this par- 
ticular. Abraham and his wife were both of the present wandering race. 
Isaac's wife was of his parents' parents' Mesopotamian origin — and so 
was Jacob's. Joseph's was an Egyptian lady of color. Moses married 
an Ethiopian. Salmon married the Canaanite Rahab, Boaz the brown 
Moabitess beauty, Ruth. David's Bathsheba was a Hittite, a wild slip 
of the land, very comely, but as far from white as from black. Solomon 
had a swarthy daughter of Pharaoh to wife. The later marriages were 
no lighter ; and undoubtedly Mary was of the likeness as well as lineage 



656 



NOTES. 



of David and Bathsheba and Ruth and Rahab and Rachel and Rebecca. 
Jesus Christ stood midway between the complexions of man, that He 
might lay His hand upon both and blend both together in Himself. The 
Asiatic is the solvent of the Caucasian and the Negro, and his color is 
almost exactly reproduced in the mulatto of America, the amalgam of 
the two opposite complexions. A light-haired, light-skinned Italian, or 
a dark-skinned German, is far more natural than a light- skinned native 
of that hot clime, and these are extremely rare. Every Arab, wild or 
tame, is of one color, and that is almost exactly the hue of the mixed 
blood of America, whom we so foolishly and falsely profess to naturally 
abhor. " They are of the very complexion of the mother of our Lord, 
nay, of our Lord himself." 




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